Putting parks in their place

How not to plan for urban green space

DYSPEPSIANA | James Krohe Jr.

The problem in a city that likes to think of itself as forward-looking is that it seldom looks back long enough to learn from its own past. That, anyway, was the conclusion I came to after thinking about the proposed redevelopment of the YWCA block in downtown Springfield.

So far, all we know about how the public space on that block might be configured is the City of Springfield’s stated wish that it include “green space.” This is an elastic term that can be stretched to include everything from a patio with a potted palm on it to Lincoln Park. The editors at the State Journal-Register spoke for many when they plugged what they described as “a park to romp in,” complete with dog runs and play equipment – the last item left dangerously undefined.

Of course everyone loves a park. Parks are a universal good, like Democracy or Free Parking. It pained me therefore when, in my column “Wet Dream” that ran in September, I had to say that I thought that even a small park of the conventional sort is not feasible for a downtown the size of Springfield’s. My stated reasons were social; unless they are very diligently managed, public parks are problematic in settings where the public does not agree on how to use them. But there are other reasons that a park in a conventional style is probably not the green space that the Y block needs.

This is not errant speculation of my usual sort. My opinion is based on history.

In 1987, the original Union Square Park opened on the south half of the block bounded by Fifth and Sixth, Madison and Jefferson. (Today’s park was reimagined and rebuilt as Abe World’s front yard.) A project of the city, the park was a complement to the old Illinois Central station that had been heroically rescued from oblivion by Nanchen and Michael Scully. I wrote about the park’s opening for this paper and asked a question for which there was then not yet an answer: “The new park at Union Station is beautiful. Will people use it?” A broad esplanade split the block that was intersected with curved walkways leading from adjacent street corners. In mid-block were pools and fountains, and in the north corners were recreational areas – children’s play equipment and picnic tables off Sixth Street, shuffleboard courts and horseshoe pits off Fifth. It was hoped that the park would draw old people from Near North Village, young singles, office workers (possibly including employees from St. John’s Hospital) and shoppers from the boutiques that then occupied the station. It was thus equipped as a social space. No fewer than 56 redwood benches in two rows faced each other across the esplanade.

What people most like to do in an urban park is eat. As William H. Whyte once put it, “If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food.” Union Station had five shops offering takeout, and there was talk of push carts. And it was quickly realized that the new park would serve equally well as a site for a revived downtown farmers market, which had just been banned from the Old Capitol mall because of the damage trucks were doing to it.

How could it miss? Several reasons, none having to do directly with its design. People who use parks prefer movable seating. (For one thing, two people can chat comfortably on a bench but three or four can’t.) The people who run parks do not like movable seating, so the benches were bolted to the pavement. The project’s designer explained to me that the need to collect and lock up unanchored chairs or benches – or pay to replace ones that get stolen when they aren’t – leads most of his clients to insist that seating be fixed. The result, unfortunately, was rather like a waiting room.

The busi est public spaces are not crowded because they are popular, they are popular because they are crowded. And Union Square was never crowded. The old folks across the street at Near North Village seldom strayed from their own secure landscaped courtyard. As for workers, they found the park too far to walk to for lunch. The city would have been wiser to build the equivalent of the old drive-in movie downtown, only instead of movies show hi-def images of Washington Park.

The old park never became derelict or dangerous, but it was all but dead. The current version of the park (in fact less a park than a plaza) has even fewer draws – fewer seats, no play areas, no water features, skimpy landscaping. Oh, it’s handsome, in a prim sort of way. But most of the time the only people in it are the bronze ones.

The original Union Square Park did not fail because it was a bad park. It failed because it was a good park in a bad place. The question that planners of the Y block must keep in mind is whether any place is a good place for a conventional park in a downtown in which even fewer people work than in the late ’80s.

Contact James Krohe Jr. at KroJnr@gmail.com.

Editor’s note

The billboard towering above Wabash Avenue still proclaims, “The Benedictine PROMISE: affordable and attainable undergraduate education.” It is a promise broken. Last Thursday the Benedictine University board of trustees announced without warning that it is pulling the plug on undergraduate education in Springfi eld at the end of this school year, leaving 520 students with an uncertain future and 75 staff and faculty members without a job. We had thought Benedictine was doing so well, and appreciated how the Lisle-based university had brought life and investment back to the historic Springfi eld College campus. The abruptness of the announcement highlighted how little connection Benedictine’s board has with Springfi eld. Had somebody here known the place was in trouble maybe something could have been done to save it. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher