This Place Is…

Winter Pocket Park

February 20th, 2007

I went to West Midtown a couple weekends ago, looking for spots of refuge from the heavy avenue traffic. I’ve been apartment hunting so something that I look for in a neighborhood is whether there are informal or formal places to hang out outside of the apartment, which will inevitably be very small. I really like some of the buildings out there, and I really wanted to like this park, which was soaking some of the sun on the very cold day.

But something about it made me stop and not want to go in. This is the entrance.

It’s OK. I didn’t know that it was a Balsley Park, but there it is. The gesture is to have the doors wide open. However, the real eye-catching element as you approach the park is actually this concession stand:

This large green structure is what I saw first, and it threw me off. I think it was the fact that Italian Ice was the largest font, and it was such a cold day that it didn’t appeal to me. Also, the cold drinks. And that the color of the concession stand matches the color of the trash can and both are similar in shape. I didn’t want to buy anything from this stand..but then I saw the coffee and thought maybe. As I got closer to the park, it turns out the concession stand was closed, so I looked in:

Yikes, those gates, does it look like a drive-way entrance…

Cold seats that don’t allow the sitter to look at anything…

…except the on-ramp. Was it me or did it seem that this was not meant for people, but for small vehicles? There is that guy who found a spot in the sun.

I loved the look and sound of this park on the Thomas Balsley Associates web site:

The description of the park makes it a public space success: there was community consensus, the “right” string of programming to make the space successful, including food, activities and seating. But the park doesn’t work. At least on this day, it didn’t. The photos on the designer’s web site are taken from the opposite end of the park, so maybe I just approached it from the “wrong” spot. It was the dead of winter, and maybe the park was built several years ago and is starting to show signs of wear. However, there shouldn’t be a wrong way to get into the park. And enduring the tests of time and seasons are what make public spaces successful experiences for people.

Entry Filed under: Urban Design, Ambiguous Places