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The forgotten land (complete article from source)
Source: Rome News-Tribune
August 08, 2007
THE PROBLEM with tossing around numbers involving geography is that they tend not to mean a lot. The dimensions just don’t really sink in.
For example, when the joint Rome/Floyd County development oversight committee was recently told there was a shot at creating a new 50-acre park and wetland mitigation area practically right in the middle of the central city, one doubts most citizens grasped the extent of what’s being proposed.
That would be roughly four times the size of the West Third Street project, including Barron Stadium, that was the hot development idea of not long ago. A park is not the same thing, to be sure, as offices and condos but, as with West Third until reminded of it, who knew such options were even there?
This 50-acre site would be made possible by a developer offering a 15-acre conservation easement on property right behind the Kmart Super Center on Hicks Drive, also known as the canyon below the Turner McCall Boulevard railroad overpass. It adjoins two city-owned parcels totaling 35 acres and running all the way to the Etowah River.
MOST RESIDENTS are unaware of it, but Rome actually owns a whole lot of undeveloped land in the downtown area, most especially along the rivers. One supposes this dates back to, and is the result of, the days before flood control (levees on the Oostanaula, the upstream Allatoona dam on the Etowah) when most of the property in question was under many feet of water each and every spring. Nobody wanted it then, nobody could use it, so the city — meaning all of the municipal taxpayers — wound up with it.
That land is largely high and dry now, only flooding (as back in 1993) under usual circumstances. Hence, it has become a somewhat valuable city asset that could be used for a variety of purposes: Parks and hiking/biking trails. High-rise condos with river views that add to the tax digest. Routes for new boulevards to ease traffic congestion.
That last is perhaps particularly important to keep in mind. Ever notice that in many bigger cities the main roadways hug the sides of rivers, sometimes elevated a bit to keep them away from flooding? That’s not the case in Rome, where the main streets, most of them predating flood control, tried to avoid the rivers as much as possible.
THAT, TO SOME extent, now leaves a pathway open for new main streets that can largely avoid knocking down homes and businesses to be created. This particular plot, for example, is along a largely vacant corridor running from Callier Springs golf course all the way to Five Points.
As for it becoming a park ... well, maybe more of a nature preserve. It’s kind of off the beaten path, the very busy mainline railroad and Georgia Power’s facilities are on one side, and the city has been operating a “borrow pit” at the location, right by the riverbank, that is quite visible in a satellite photo.
A “borrow pit” is literally what it means: a pit from which material like sand or gravel is “borrowed” for construction sites with the implication that someday what is “borrowed” will be returned. Apparently the first “wetland mitigation” that Rome would have to perform is its own.
Whatever this property ultimately becomes, it should primarily benefit the entire community either as a park, or a way to erase the worst traffic congestion, or even as a place for wandering, homeless young male bears to settle down.
The primary importance of these suddenly available 50 acres is the reminder that Rome is blessed with an abundance of unused green space of the sort many cities desperately crave. And most of it is right where it is most desirable — on the immediate outskirts of the central downtown district.
THIS CHUNK is actually a comparatively small piece of the city’s holdings. Even now, Jackson Hill/Fort Norton shouts much louder than this tract to have some money spent upon it.
And therein lies the rub. To make public-owned spaces, even when in all the right places, both pleasant and safe for the public to use requires some investment. Some things, like hiking trails, are less expensive than others, like full-fledged parks or boulevards.
That means with tax money, either through diverting some of the regular revenue flow or via future special-purpose, local-option sales tax projects.
The conservation easement offer, which brings a previously isolated and forgotten chunk of public property back into play, should serve to awaken the community to some neglected opportunities.
Click here for complete article from Rome News-Tribune
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