Notice I call it Falls Park and not THE FALLS. The first thing the next mayor needs to do is take down that stupid looking 1982 jacket vest colored sign and replace if with a new quartzite sign that says ‘Falls Park’. So if any future mayors try to do the same thing, it will be a little bit harder to replace. I still don’t know how a mayor can just make that decision on his own with executive authority? That should have gone thru public hearings with the naming committee, historic board, the parks board, the planning commission, the rubberstamp arts commission and a vote of the city council. Heck, the next mayor needs to do just that to get it changed back! So much corruption at city hall. When I bitched to someone about this who works at city hall they kind of said to me like ‘Who cares.’ and I was like, ‘How would you like it if he renamed Fawick Park, Sanford Park and replaced David with that goofy Happy Chef looking statue that sits on the Sanford campus.’ They had a change of heart.
LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL WE COULD MAKE FALLS PARK WITHOUT SPENDING MUCH ON PERMANENT INFRASTRUCTURE
If you have ever been to the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC, Canada, you know what I am talking about. It is one of the gems of this coastal city. When I lived in the Pacific Northwest I made a couple of trips to Victoria (before 9/11 so all you needed was an ID to enter the country and empty your pockets before getting on the ferry. I saw them make an old lady cry because she couldn’t take her peaches with her. The attendant was like, ‘Mam, this is a 45 minute ride and there is a huge food court at the dock’.) Victoria is on a peninsula thingy so driving there is a pain in the ass, so peeps drive from Seattle to Port Angeles and take a 45 minute cruise in open ocean. I tell you this because we came back on high tide once and I was as green as cucumber.
With Greek and Scottish culture throughout the city and dozens of public museums the Butchart Gardens is there true attraction;
Internationally renowned, the 55-acre display garden located near Victoria, British Columbia was created in 1904 by Jennie Butchart. Still privately owned and operated by family descendants, The Gardens is a National Historic Site of Canada. Open every day of the year, welcoming over one million visitors annually.
You just get lost in there. I would recommend the city fund a trip so a councilor, parks manager and parks board member can go see this in person. We could do this at Falls Park using native flowers and grasses and really turn Falls Park into a nature wonderland instead of a Six Flags.
There is also a bigger idea in all of this. If you read the Buchart website you will notice it is privately owned with volunteers. You could get corporate sponsorship’s for the garden beds at Falls Park that could pay for the little maintenance they will need or even have a team of volunteers. If the Pavilion can use volunteers to operate it’s Great Hall, then why can’t the city have volunteers maintain Falls Park?
There are so many opportunities to bring in the community on this and make it the talk of the midwest, but if contractors in this town don’t get a contract every 5 minutes to poor concrete over our parks, they get nervous and city hall folds like a cheap suit.
Right now, there are two schools of thought in America. Some are into a ‘Rose Garden,’ while others like a cement patio. AND, this has never been mentioned before, but the obsession with cement by some suggests mob ties or the propensity to that type of leadership. What do you all think?
When the ‘Phillips to the Falls’ concept was first pushed in the early 90s, it meant Phillips would take you to the Falls. It didn’t mean that there would be towering buildings, streetcar-designed buildings, all with expensive condos, and ice parks along the way. No, it meant no more Pitts Salvage and green space galore. But over time, the ‘PttF’ movement has been hijacked, turned into a development opportunity, where greenspace, serenity, and dignity to the Falls and its history appear to have been lost.
If we are not careful, the area around the Falls will become reminiscent of Marty McFly’s observance of the town square some 30 years later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eUiDbdBZt0
The Falls has become a tourist haunt with potential for retirees habitat. Let it happen by itself. Keep city fascists away. Victoria Canada is unique. Ferries go there from Seattle and Port Angeles. From Seattle is more like a cruise. The Grand hotel is where to stay. Rooms are varied design studio provincial with a doorbell. Everything in Victoria is walk or bike. Point Roberts is not far. It’s the furthest northwest corner of the US. Can’t get there without a long ride through Canada. Mostly French is spoken and must use Canadian money. It’s the US but more like Canada.
“… the 55-acre display garden located near Victoria, British Columbia was created in 1904 …” and
the Japanese Gardens at Terrace Park in Sioux Falls, “were established in 1928 by former caretaker Joseph Maddox. Originally created between 1926 and 1936”.
Some might say that the attitudes and actions of the 2020s are building to resemble those of the Roaring 1920s.
But the use of park ground in Sioux Falls in the 2020s provides contrast between the two periods.
In the early 1900s, park caretakers invested their blood, sweat, tears and time to build more natural beauty into the parks in Sioux Falls.
In the 2020s “park caretakers” reside in offices on Dakota Ave, are paid six figure salaries and dream of the Wisconsin-Dellsification of the natural beauty found in and surrounding the City’s parks. The modern “park caretaker” (aka a park and rec dept administrator) has the vision of a concrete and particle board tchotchke paradise.
Albeit there are million dollar (plus) townhomes associated with the 2020s vision of parks in Sioux Falls, rest assured, the result of the passage of time, the tchotchke-nature of the current effort by Sioux Falls City Parks and Recreation wil manifest.
The short term lustre of the tchotchke will fade long before the TIFs expire.