Daniel Wolkoff is the guy on the left in this pic.
Save McMillan Park
Daniel Goldon Wolkoff, amglassart@yahoo.com
McMillan Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., is a gem in the Emerald Necklace of parks planned by Sen. McMillan’s Senate Parks Commission in 1906, parks that the DC government does not think this section of the city deserves. This is difficult to understand. Why are the residents of this city confronted with wrestling our own resources back from a government and development community, obsessed with huge new construction, which needlessly destroys our parkland? The simple recognition of the limits of resources, nature, energy and available land, need to be recognized and adhered to for a healthy living environment. This tunnel vision would not have allowed New York’s Central Park or Rock Creek Park to exist unless excessively built over.
We need to emulate Manhattan’s Central Park, one of the world’s “Great Places.” It is over five hundred acres, and it was declining in the 1970’s, when a conservancy joined with the city of New York for a twenty-six-year public-private partnership to restore, manage, and enhance the magnificent park. It is hard to accept the District’s fencing off McMillan, our Olmsted park, wasting this “Great Place” and over nine million dollars for over a quarter of a century. It spends over $250,000 annually to mow a lawn no one could ever sit on, picnic on, stroll on, or in any way benefit from! How could it leave this precious , large tract of parkland to waste, instead of simply planting trees which by now would have already grown into a tall lush forest with all its critical benefits to the environment, the storm water retention, the air, and the health of the community.
In any city with proper planning, the millions of dollars would have supported a McMillan Park Conservancy and funded the restoration of the park and all its activities for our city years ago. The complete waste of McMillan Park demonstrates the neglect and contempt the DC government has for DC’s eastern section, under-served for generations, with one fifth the park space of the northwest section, which is always given preferences. The Vision McMillan Partners development, which destroys most of the historic landmark continues this unacceptable imbalance. I encourage the Historic Preservation Review Board to reject the city’s development plans.
The McMillan Site is protected under the Landmark and Historic District Act of 1978, DC Law 2-144. The entire site and its context are “protected!” VMP itself commissioned the Historic Preservation Report by EHT Traceries, Inc. which states “this level of development, is inconsistent with historic preservation of the site, “ and that is self-evident. We need all of this park space, our land, even more we need an expanded park system for critical community activities and recreation.
We need the vision of Sen. McMillan to restore and complete “The Emerald Necklace” of green space, woods, and trails for the health of our central city and for a higher quality of life, like the upper income areas of DC have enjoyed, since Olmsted designed Rock Creek Park in 1890. [Continued online at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2012/12-09-12.htm#Wolkoff]
###############
No comments:
Post a Comment