I attended one of the meetings concerning plans for Red Mountain Park and came away reminded of the story of the blind men and the elephant.
The first sightless man walks up to the elephant, feels the wide side and concludes it is a wall. The next grabs a tusk and says it is a spear; a third touches the tail and thinks it a rope.
Down the line, each man envisions the pachyderm as something else as he feels a different part of its anatomy.
Red Mountain Park is bigger than any elephant and is at least as ambiguous as you consider what it will be. The park covers 708 acres on a swatch that stretches 4½ miles.
The public has attended meetings to tell park designers what they would like to see in the park, which would link communities as diverse as Homewood, Ishkooda and Fairfield. The park is expected to cost $30 million to $50 million, including land and development.
Wendy Jackson is executive director of the Freshwater Land Trust, the Birmingham nonprofit that is leading the push to buy the land on the crest of Red Mountain. She admitted when we spoke that she initially had some serious reservations about going through a public process to design the park. More than once varied points of view have stymied good things from developing here.
“That’s why this has been so heartwarming,” Jackson said, “because I haven’t seen that conflict. We haven’t had the traditional clashes you would expect.”
There seems to be room for grassy meadows for picnics and throwing Frisbees. There appears to be room for bird-watching, mountain biking and running. And the dream is that it will accommodate both the disabled and the able-bodied.
As I made my way to the meeting at the downtown library, a fellow I know through local running events was on his way out. He was beaming at the thought of having a new running course near his home.
When I went into the meeting, I heard several ideas bantered about. One person wanted space allotted for horses. Another suggested a sort of environmental classroom.
The audience at that meeting definitely had a greenish hue. Not that they were big money donors. These folks favored leaving as much of the park natural, clearing only enough to yield space for mountain biking, running and walking.
The original design called for baseball fields and about 18 soccer fields. Jackson said designers are figuring how to make that work.
“The soccer fields are a big question right now,” Jackson said. “We’re talking about some pretty intensive grading to accommodate the fields that were originally proposed in the visioning plan, but we haven’t ruled them out. The designers are working on a couple of creative ideas. Maybe not here but here. Maybe on a piece of property just outside the park, inside the park maybe.
“What we’re looking at is doing some things that might bring the soccer fields to the table so everybody gets what they want,” she said. “These are questions the design team is struggling with. Can we give everybody what they want and right now it seems most people have been very, very happy with what they’ve heard so far.”
Jackson told me the planned unveiling of the design has been pushed back to January to avoid conflicts with holiday festivities. No doubt it will be a welcome gift whenever we receive it.
And if all goes as it has, it’ll be a design where everybody will find what they want.
EMAIL: screnshaw@bhamnews.com
