Wednesday, Apr. 14, 2010

Bring back the park

Overlooked in the debate about Raleigh's Public Safety Center is another important part of City Manager Russell Allen's plan to upgrade city services.

Called "remote operations," or "remote ops" for short, it involves building a solid waste center in east Raleigh and relocating and expanding city facilities for the maintenance of streets, parks and vehicles.

Among other things, it would move the city's garbage truck depot out of downtown, which is long overdue.

We all make mistakes that seem inexplicable in hindsight. Raleigh's move decades ago to park garbage trucks on a former city park is one of those.

Before then it was Devereaux Meadow, the cozy home of Raleigh's minor league baseball team, The Capitals. The players had stone dressing rooms. Tennis players and high school football teams played there, too.

Raleigh demolished the park in 1979, hardly its wisest move. Allen wasn't here then, much less the city manager.

But now that Allen is planning the new remote ops facilities, he has an idea about what to do with the current property: sell it to developers.

"We see selling that space to the private sector," he told me. "It's a great development site."

It wouldn't be bad to encourage more residential development downtown, which already has roads and water and sewer services in place.

In this case, however, there is, as developers like to say, a higher and better use for the property: make it a park again.

Alas, the site is probably too tight to be reborn as a modern baseball ballpark. But it would make an excellent public park for the thousands of people who live downtown, and the thousands more to come.

Yes, Fred Fletcher Park is nearby, but it lacks the open space a new Devereaux Meadow could provide - while restoring Pigeon House Creek.

By reviving Devereaux Meadow, Raleigh could hit this ball out of the park.

Batter up, City Council.