Boston story about failure to maintain public assets

Boston is going through a process to figure out how to address the "Greenway" created by converting the highway through the city into a tunnel ("Big Dig" project), see "Event plans for Greenway taking shape."

Columnist Adrian Walker, in the column "Park stuck in neutral," writes:

You might think of Southwest Corridor Park as a dream deferred. The 4.7-mile expanse, which runs from Back Bay Station to Jamaica Plain, was planned as an urban showcase. It's never become that, exactly. Stretches of it are lovely, while others bear witness to benign neglect. Perhaps that's to be expected of a large urban park that is mostly maintained by neighbors and volunteers, instead of by the state government responsible for it.

''Things are just not maintained, to be very simple about it," Donna Johnson of the Southwest Corridor Park Conservancy, which was formed 14 months ago to advocate for the park, said in a phone call yesterday. The conservancy was started because the parks were already woefully short on cash and attention. ''I can tell you that the people who work in the parkland are just very discouraged," Johnson said. ''This is our park and we've always been proud of it, and we're embarrassed to come out here now." ...

In 1989, when it was still being built, Southwest Corridor Park had a staff of 24. That became a staff of three several years ago. While there is as manager for the corridor, that manager has no operating budget. This would be a shame anywhere, but it's especially troubling in the middle of the city, where green space is scarce to begin with. ''The fact that they took any whack at all -- given the condition we know all of the urban parks are in -- seems like a really misplaced thing to do," said Kathy Abbott, director of the conservation and recreation campaign of the Trust For Public Land.

It's important to remember that long term plans for maintaining and enhancing public assets is essential.

Index Keywords: public-assets