Good News, Bad news

The good news is we should no longer be facing resistance from East Side Park Neighbors.
This is because after further inspection we are not able to use the poured in place rubber surfacing as close to the existing trees as we hoped. While we are disappointed we are fine with that because we certainly do not want to damage such beautiful trees. They are definitely an asset and it was never our goal to disrupt anything.

The fact is that while the manufacturers claim the surfacing is porous, it is not as porous as it would need to be for such a large tree with such a large root structure. The air exchange and water needed to maintain the trees health requires the area around the tree to be further out that we have allowable room for.

We are definitely disappointed but we are glad that we will be protecting the trees. And certainly we are happy that the East Side Neighbors will be happy too.


Where does this leave us?

The city had requested we examine Bjion and we did that. The deal breaker with Bjion is the extremely loud train whistle that happens as trains pass through. Anyone who has ever had a small child who is afraid of loud noise or trains will tell you that they are really distressed. This is often made worse with a child who is affected by autism. They often respond in such a way that is very hard to comfort and can be distressing for other children to see. We certainly do not want that as a regular occurrence. 


Again, Where does that leave us?


Our next option is Norse park which has always been our next choice. We like Norse because it is a beautiful park with a lot of open space to put a large play system. We like it because it has a lot of parking with the potential to add more. It has a nice shelter that can be adaptable for accessibility. We hope that the park neighbors are more used to a well used park as they deal with baseball and softball games quite a bit.


What are the down sides.  There is no shade. That is one major concern of ours but it looks like we have found an attractive solution. The company that we would like to use builds beautiful pergolas that provide shade and are attractive too. We are looking into the possibility of using vines to accent their shade and beauty at Norse we can plant the trees where we want them .

The down side to this is cost. This will reduce the amount of money we intend to use for equipment or increase our budget. That is unless of course we can somehow squeeze it all in together or get trees donated.


Are you a neighbor of Norse Park?  We would LOVE to hear from you! What are your thoughts on the project.

We are working with the city to get a mailer out to all of the households and schedule a city informational meeting. We can increase the amount of information out there about the park and answer questions and address concerns.

Have a great day.