Make room for new park

Not too long ago, Chico’s Downtown Plaza Park was a wonderfully simple village green, lined with a couple of dozen towering and stately 130-year-old elm trees. The old gazebo-style stage provided a venue for the popular Friday Night Concerts in the Park, where, depending on the entertainment, children ran and played among the picnicking families sitting on blankets and folding chairs, or dirt-twirlers kicked up the dust in rhythm with the love vibes emanating from the jam band on stage. Other times of the year, the park hosted artisans’ fairs and political rallies and other community affairs.

When there were no scheduled events, those considered by some to be the less-desirable among us would use the park, sleeping on its benches, lying in its grass or gathered on the gazebo steps. We imagine at times some were also conducting nefarious financial transactions.

Then one of the big elms dropped a branch, nearly striking a park visitor. Then another toppled. An arborist came and declared the remaining trees to be terminal and the city decided to pull them down and change the park forever. An ambitious remake was rolled out with a projected cost exceeding $3 million. The project began last September and before long the entire park was razed into a muddy quagmire, save two evergreens. Dozens of coveted downtown parking spots disappeared.

The once-simple park is turning into something very different with a state-of-the art fountain, a veterans’ monument, a concrete bandstand, cement tables with mounted chess boards, fancy restrooms and a host of other features that will fill the downtown patch of city-owned property. To some, including us, the new park plans appear to err on the side of gaudy. It’s like living next to a guy who inherits some money and suddenly goes nuts with mermaid fountains and lawn jockeys.

A capable crew of sub-contractors working under trying conditions is working to complete complex projects that are inevitably easier to draw than actually construct. And when completed, we’re sure the new park will dazzle and shine. But we’re also going to miss the simpler, less-ambitious plaza that once occupied that spot.