Urban Parks: Confederate Park

[Deuce]

Still have the guys "holding down the corners" at night sometimes. Recently though there has been a drop-off in that too.

[hooplady]

Claude Nolan - of course, I knew Nimnicht didn't sound right.  Double-duh on me since one of the original owners of my house worked there in the '20's & '30's.

So in its original state it is very similar to the building across the street which has been preserved.

[fsu813]

So does anyone know if all city parks get the same budget for maitenence and clean up ? or is it based on the size of the park ?

anybody?

[Cliffs_Daughter]

So does anyone know if all city parks get the same budget for maitenence and clean up ? or is it based on the size of the park ?

anybody?

I can try to find out for you - I have 1 contact in Parks/Rec

[tufsu1]

^That's a scene that has changed.  The only homeboys hanging out there now are geese.

yeah...but the geese may be more intimidating...those things are huge!

[fsu813]

i'd be very interested in how any money allocated to the park is spent. they have a park security guard there duting the days, something most other parks don't have. i wonder if that eats up funds that would otherwise be spent elsewhere.

[Springfielder]

Personally, I'm glad there's security there and wouldn't want to see that stopped

[chris farley]

The entrance to the park shown in a photo above shows 1907 - it is that year since prior to that it was a swamp and Cypruss ponds.  The following from the the TU in 1906

Twelve two-horse teams are at work in hauling sand to the new
park site, and each wagon averages ten yards of sand each day, making
the amount of sand placed on the park site daily, about one hundred
and twenty yards.
Besides this the city carts are busily engaged in hauling clean
dry garbage to the park site which is dumped in the marsh. The
sand teams then come along and cover this with clean white sand.
The amount of dry garbage hauled to the site daily averages ninety
yards.
Five weeks ago teams started to dump garbage and sand just east
of Market Street where the marsh was very deep. This work has
progressed very rapidly and the new site presents a good sanitary
condition.
The park site has been filled in from Main Street to a point halfway
through the block east of Market Street, and within a few weeks
there will be a clean hard strip of good hard ground between Main
and Liberty Streets, which only a few months ago was only a swamp
and unfit for any purpose whatever for the general public

[stjr]

^Nice find, Chris.  Thanks for posting it.

[Bativac]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but my wife and I visited this park yesterday. The grounds were fairly clean (it's interesting, the creative places people find to stash garbage) but Hogans Creek was absolutely disgusting. It was completely choked with trash to the point where the water could barely be seen.

I found a TU article (http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-02-22/story/toxic_past_haunts_future_of_jacksonvilles_hogans_creek) that mentions the creek becoming a potential Superfund site, and for that reason the city doesn't want to spend any money on it.

Is there any restrictions on volunteers getting some of the trash out of the creek? I know it's still a contaminated body of water, and getting the trash out might not do much real good, but it would at least visually improve the park (and maybe make me feel a little better).

[Captain Zissou]

^ I would love to help clean the creek.  Is it safe?? 

[fsujax]

I wouldnt go swimming in it!

[Bativac]

I don't even know how you'd go about cleaning the creek of all the junk that's in there. My only thought was to skim the surface with a glorified pool skimmer and get the bigger stuff out. I certainly wouldn't wade around in there unless I had some serious boots. Anyone have any ideas?

It's sad because the park looks like it really only needs a couple dedicated maintenance men spending a couple days a week on it picking up trash, edging, etc. If you spent a few days giving it a serious cleaning, maintaining it wouldn't take too much effort (or expense). This park goes back a hundred years and it should really be treated as more of a big deal than it is.

[Lunican]

I believe the city has grapple trucks which could be used to pull out all of the shopping carts.

[sheclown]

Park clean up days are definitely a good idea.  The hazard's probably no worse than our front yards