I’m Glad to Hear It Referred to As Greenspace Instead of the “Old Church Building”

That was the opening comment made by the Highland Height Garden Club’s Noreen Paradise at the February 15th Committee of the Whole meeting.
Paradise was referring, of course, to the 3 acre plot of land that sits between Highland Road and the Community Center, where the now-demolished Old Church Building used to sit.

She told Council that Garden Club members would gladly serve on a planning committee and that the Garden Club was enthusiastic about turning part of the new greenspace into a community garden. She said that Garden Club had already contacted the Highland Garden Center on Wilson Mills Road, to see if a they would like to participate, perhaps by selling plants and providing advice to residents interested in exercising their green thumbs.


Judy Dearden, founder of the new Highland Heights Green Task Force, pledged her group’s help and support and told Council that the group was “wholly behind doing a community garden.” She suggested that rain barrels could be utilized to provide water for the community gardens and other greenspace plantings.


Sean Milroy, who lives along Highland Road with his wife Amy, two sons, several chickens and a new dog, told Council: “My boys would love to see a playground.” He said that the greenspace was a “community center,” and that “the point was to use it to strengthen the community”.


Most exciting was the vision shared by Larry Nudleman of the Lion’s Club. He explained that the Lion’s Club had earlier hoped to put a gazebo in the Community Park, “but the new pool got put in its place instead."
Rather than throwing a party to celebrate the Lion’s Club’s 50th Anniversary this year, the group decided that it would like to donate money to put a gazebo in the city’s new greenspace. Nudelman brought brochures to give Council a better idea of what the options were and what the gazebo might look like. His concept was to erect a 15’X20”rectangular gazebo, made of maintenance-free, recycled plastic-wood material, on the western edge of the greenspace, facing the police station.
In Nudelman’s imagining, the gazebo would serve as much more that just a bandstand for summer concerts. “People could get married there and then walk over to the Community Center for their reception.” In other words, it would be more than just beautiful and useful; it might even generate some revenue for the city too.


While not every Council member participated in the discussion, those that did---including Councilman Frank Legan, who fought long and hard for more than two years to keep the decrepit, substandard Old Church Building standing---expressed their enthusiasm for the ideas pitched by Paradise, Dearden, Milroy and Nudelman.


Councilwoman Cathy Murphy said that she liked the idea of forming a planning committee and that she thought it was “important to develop a plan, an overall scheme, even if the city can’t implement it all this year.” She also suggested that any plan include a path or walkway for foot traffic between the greenspace’s auxiliary parking lot and the Community Center.


Council President Scott Mills told residents that the city’s landscape architect could be enlisted to draw up plans and possible designs for the greenspace—an idea that Murphy later repeated. Mayor Scott Coleman promised Council that he would speak with the architect by the end of the week, to get that process started.


Councilman Leo Lombardo opined that it would be “nice to get a drawing of the property to see how everything would fit in there”---an idea that Legan and others immediately agreed with.


It was Councilman Bob Mastrangelo, however, who addressed a concern shared by many residents in attendance—that it would take as long to get things started in the new greenspace as it did to make the demolition decision that created it.
“Let’s keep it on the front burner,” Mastrangelo said. “We have a tendency to put things on the back burner. Let’s keep it going. It’s not necessary to wait for the budget to be finalized to move forward with this.”

Council President Scott Mills pledged to put the greenspace on the agenda for further discussion at another Committee of the Whole meeting in the near future.

UPDATE: despite Mayor Coleman's promise that he would speak with the city's landscape architect by week's end, Coleman admitted at the February 22nd council meeting that he had not yet had a conversation with the architect.  The greenspace is on the agenda for the March 1st Committee of the Whole meeting.

Read what patch.com said about the meeting:
http://hillcrest.patch.com/articles/gazebo-garden-proposed-for-green-space-by-highland-heights-city-hall