Why not a Y block wetland? 

For years, “green space” in downtown Springfield meant a weedy parking lot. These days greenery of a handsomer sort abounds, in curbside flower beds, in planter boxes and urns, in hanging baskets and window boxes and sidewalk planting wells. By the most accommodating definition, green space is merely any public space that has green things in it. Certain downtown stretches of Sixth Street and Capitol Avenue could thus be considered green spaces. So is the planted nook that brightens North Fifth between Washington and Jefferson streets. So is the Statehouse lawn.

Ask people what they think of as green space, however, and most will say “a park.” The decision to redevelop the YWCA block downtown with a mixed-use complex that incorporates green space has excited extravagant hopes among observers of this mind. They foresee space to play with children or walk dogs (or, more commonly, walk the children and play with dogs). I’m not convinced that even a small park of the conventional sort is feasible for a downtown the size of Springfield’s. Unless they are very diligently managed, public parks are problematic places in settings where the public does not agree on how to use them. That’s why sensible private developers put their parks behind locked gates, as was done in the case of the landscaped courtyard at Near North Village.

Happily, green spaces provide other public goods besides recreation. Some are ornamental, as are the few landscaped grounds of corporate and public buildings and the Lincoln home area and the Old State Capitol. (Being pleasant to look at enhances a human’s prospects on the open market; it enhances a property’s prospects too.) Many studies confirm the healing effects of greenery on the ill, which is why the cut

flowers in hospital patient rooms have evolved into lush gardens such as the $1 million rooftop garden for families of kids in critical care at Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria. Green spaces act as balm to soothe nerves rubbed raw by the jangle of the city, although what downtown Springfield needs is stimulation, which green spaces can provide too.

Green spaces do not merely offer relief from the sight of concrete and steel structures, they can replace them as means to control stormwater runoff. If nature does not have a soul, it seems at times to possess a sense of humor, given the many opportunities it gives humans to make fools of themselves. One such was the summer downpour of Aug. 28, which left every Springfield Fire Department crew on duty for one shift rescuing motorists stranded after trying to drive through flooded underpasses and intersections. A reformer would have better chances of getting a bill through the General Assembly.

We have waded into Springfield’s stormwater problem in previous columns, such as “Going against the flow,” from Aug. 11, 2011. That piece described green or “soft” measures to cope with flooding rains to augment the existing sewer pipes and pumps. Divert stormwater runoff onto water-collecting swales, for example, and the tangle of plants slows the movement of water into overloaded sewer pipes.

The Y block would seem to be a particularly promising site for such an approach. A study of the potential of the proposed Jackson Street Trail (see IT, “Forging a new path,” July 24, 2014) that was prepared for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce by the Springfield landscape architects and land planning firm Massie Massie & Associates suggested converting that block of Jackson to a greenway. The existing brick surface would be replaced with permeable pavement and subsurface retention cisterns to detain excess storm water, which is prudent and doable.

Happily for those of us who are columnists, and whose ideas thus are not expected to actually have any effect whatsoever in the real world, we can dare to go beyond the merely doable. The block is above the course of the old Town Branch of Spring Creek, which wound its way through that part of the future downtown. (I described the Town Branch in a 1977 article for IT, which you can read in my Second Thoughts blog at www.illinoistimes. com.) The stream was piped up and converted to a sewer decades ago but the sloping valley walls it carved remain substantially intact.

Water that falls on the upland bits of that part of downtown thus tries to join that ghost stream to this day. That’s why Sixth and Edwards floods after a heavy rain, providing temporary pools in which local drivers can splash and play. That also may explain a curious thing about the Y block. The State of Illinois had planted lines of trees and shrubs atop the berm that surrounded its new parking lot there. On three sides of the block, what was meant as a landscape screen is straggly and gap-toothed, where the plants survive at all. On the southwest corner of the block the plants are lush, in spite of the landlord’s neglect; I suspect it’s because plants there drink in great draughts of rainwater that pour there from the rest of the block.

A little astute engineering could turn the tendency of water to flood in that part of downtown into a virtue. The stretch of Jackson Street between Fifth and Fourth is a block of minimal importance in terms of traffic or parking. Why not tear out the bricks, smash up the curbs, dig up the verges and replace it all with a marsh that would collect and hold stormwater diverted from the Y block? The flow would never be regular enough to create even a simulacrum of a creek, but it would irrigate plantings adapted to such a setting. The gardens of the Executive Mansion that abut it to the south must remain fenced, but the new wetland could be knitted visually with the plantings on the mansion ground to create a green interlude extending the better part of a city block.

Building wetlands of this sort is an evolved art. It was a new idea 20 years ago – I know, because I wrote about it – which means it is ripe enough for Springfield to swallow by now. Add a winding walking path down the middle of the old right of way, and you have a real estate amenity and infrastructure enhancement that also improves the looks of the joint. Can’t be bad.

Contact James Krohe Jr. at [email protected].

Editor’s note

The fi rst stage of Springfi eld’s rail relocation has started with groundbreaking last month on an underpass at Carpenter and 10th streets. Although funding for the full relocation project is still uncertain, the City of Springfi eld, Sangamon County and Hanson Professional Services of Springfi eld are working to ensure minority involvement in the rail relocation, with possible ramifi cations far into the future. The city and Hanson have been meeting with young people of color to extol the virtues of engineering and similar careers, in hopes that those young people will become the next generation of skilled workers designing Springfi eld’s future. Earlier this year, Hanson hired two African- American college graduates full time and took on three African-American students as interns over the summer to offer experience with real-life engineering projects. “It’s important for these individuals to see if this is a path that they would like to use for their future careers,” said Hanson CEO and president Sergio “Satch” Pecori. “Diversity is crucial to Hanson’s success in terms of our people, our projects and our services. We believe we must create opportunities for our children to stay in Springfi eld after college.” The program appears to have the ingredients for successfully including Springfi eld’s minority population in what may be a major project. Now let’s see the same level of effort on minority hiring with Springfi eld’s police department, fi re department, CWLP and other city departments. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher