Deck Park Will Be City's "Oceanfront Property"

A Friend of Unfair Park whose name might rhyme with "Joanna Singleton" sends word: USA Today, in its round-up of urban parks yesterday, took a long, loving look at the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park. Turns out, ours is among several outta-thin-air parks either in the works or being proposed across...

By Robert Wilonsky

May 6, 2010

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A Friend of Unfair Park whose name might rhyme with "Joanna Singleton" sends word: USA Today, in its round-up of urban parks yesterday, took a long, loving look at the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park. Turns out, ours is among several outta-thin-air parks either in the works or being proposed across the country; Los Angeles and St. Louis are also looking at ways to cap their highways with green space.

Says Peter Harnik, director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land and author of the recently published Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities, "Highways are extremely destructive to the fabric of urban life -- the noise that emanates from it, the smell." And what better way to fix that than with a park? Here's what Linda Owen, president of the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, tells USA Today: The deck park is "essentially like creating oceanfront property. It's an economic engine." Meanwhile, "The freeway is like our medieval wall. You couldn't get over it."

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