The Journal Star provides on their website a copy of the “Questions and Answer” sheet Ken Hinton distributed at the special District 150 School Board meeting on Monday. On pages three and four, it says this:
9. What is the actual size of the property being acquired at the park site. DW
ANSWER: A total of 10.47 acres is being acquired at the Park site either by actual purchase by the School District or subject to the 99-year Intergovernmental Agreement. In addition, however, Glen Oak Park is 110 acres and all of the facilities will be available for school use subject to mutually agreed rules and regulations (scheduling, etc.) The general Park site includes such things as Centennial Playground, the theatre bandshell, baseball/softball diamonds, Children’s Museum, Zoo, soccer fields, nature areas, numerous tennis courts (some of which are currently being used by Woodruff High School) and Botanical Gardens and Conservatory.
At the Park District Board meeting tonight, East Bluff United Neighborhood Association president Marty Palmer asked the board members about that answer during the public comments period. I wasn’t personally there to hear it, but he reports to me in an e-mail that “the board denied all of the answers” to that question, and “they (board) have not talked to #150 at all since the letter of intent was signed.”
So it does appear that District 150 is (once again) jumping the gun on their site plans. Until they have an actual intergovernmental agreement (not just a letter of intent), they can’t assume all of the things they’re proposing in their question and answer document.
But there’s something else that’s questionable about their answer to this question and question 18 (“Would the city be willing to cover the cost of going to the park if the current school site is chosen”). Please bear with me as I set this up:
One of the big selling factors for the park site is that the kids will be able to utilize the park because they’ll be immediately adjacent to it. Specifically, the document mentions such things as the baseball diamonds, zoo, children’s museum, tennis courts, and botanical gardens. Has anyone looked at how far away from the park site these features are?
The land the school wants to build on is on the corner of Frye and Prospect. Even assuming the school building would sit on the farthest northeast corner of the proposed site (which would be unlikely), the approximate distances from the building to these wonderful amenities are:
| Feature | Distance |
|---|---|
| Baseball Diamonds | 380-700 feet |
| Zoo | 750 feet |
| Children’s Museum | 900 feet |
| Tennis Courts | 1000 feet |
| Botanical Gardens | 1300 feet |
For comparison, a city block in that area is about 350 feet. So, the closest baseball diamond is about a block away, and the botanical gardens are almost four blocks away — almost as far as it is from the current Glen Oak School to the park. Are we to assume that these children are going to walk from the new school building to these features?
I’ll buy the baseball diamonds. But do you really see 30-60 six-year-olds trapsing across the park to the zoo when it’s 94 degrees outside or raining? Or walking two and a half blocks to the children’s museum in the snow in 25 degree weather? Or ever walking to the botanical gardens even if it were 72 and sunny?
My point is that it’s very likely these kids are going to be loaded up on buses and driven to many of these different parts of the park anyway (which makes their question 18 moot). And if that’s the case, why can’t they do that from the current Glen Oak School site now? Obviously the cost of transportation to the park would be far less, even given the price of gas these days, than the cost of either building on the park site or creating a 10-acre campus at Wisconsin and Frye.
Those baseball diamonds will be gone when the zoo expands.
CJ it seems that you are really reaching with this whole distance thing. Do you think they will be going to the park when it is 94 degrees or raining anyhow?
Sure, if they’re going to the zoo or the children’s museum — something enclosed. I’m just saying that I’ll bet the kids don’t stray far from the land immediately surrounding the school and will have some sort of transportation to the farther areas of the park, and that if that’s the case they could accomplish the same thing at the corner of Wisconsin and Frye. If they’re willing to walk four blocks, they could walk to the park from the current school site as needed; they’ve already indicated they don’t think safety is that big of a problem crossing Prospect.
To clarify a minor detail, the Zoo and Children’s Museum will share the same entrance and ticketing office.
You mean the new zoo configuration, I assume. Currently, the zoo and park offices are not close enough to share an entrance.
Correct. I’m just pointing out that the Zoo and Museum would actually be the same distance, whatever that may be.
CJ, do you or anyone else, have access to a map of the new configuration that could be viewed online?
Actually having all those things within walking distance is the one big arguement in favor of that location. I don’t think those distances are overwhelming at all. The baseball diamonds are within an Albert Pujols homerun and I’ve walked much further just getting to the civic center downtown.
And not all days have the worst weather. If they let the kids ride to the botanical gardens, the administrators ought to be arrested for being a health hazard to our children.
My concern about the park would be if the school usage of the park got in the way of its use by the general public.
My main concern in this whole kerfuffle is the attitude of the school board and their obvious unwillingness to listen to the public that they are elected to serve. I hope the public’s memory of the board members positions is better than that of the park district board who built that monstrosity on the river that was also in the face of public opinion. We returned the park board directors, including the board president, all of whom seemingly flipped the bird to the rest of us. It is that kind of voter response that lead to this current situation – if the elected folk thought they would be held accountable they might think twice.
After all these expansions are done… there won’t be much of a park to enjoy unless you pay an ‘entrance’ fee, and then you won’t be in much of a park at all.
A map of the new zoo configuration is available from Planning and Growth Management via FOIA — not sure if it is on line anywhere.
Is the Children’s Museum on line with a scale??
And to sound the same pathetic trumpet call — only the zoo has been conditionally approved as a special use in a R-3 once all of the criteria are meet as approved by the City Council. With that in mind, the zoo expansion would take out one of the baseball diamonds which would be used for parking.
Now to the Children’s Museum —- to date, no special use has been approved by the City Council for a museum in a park which is a special use in a R-3 district — ie the park. Then there is the effect that the increased (presumably) traffic from the children’s museum will contribute to the traffic pattern at Glen Oak which is already maxed out from the use of the park, said to increase with the proposed increased patronage of the zoo.
Then where exactly is the parking going to be located and how much of that? So it could be ball diamonds – zero — zoo and museum — two??? What is the potential impact on an already stressed out situation for emergency response personnel, fire access??? Is anyone listening does anyone care????
The City is not being proactive (to my knowledge and emails sent to and received from Planning and Growth Management) by requiring the special use to be filed and move through the approval process. It does seem like the Ostrich in the Sand for bureaucrats plays in Peoria.
Are you kidding? Now you guys are counting feet. The money for the Zoo hasn’t even been rasied yet. Parking for the school will be within the 10 acres. Has any of you been to that park lately? As far as parks go, it’s a dump. The trails are neglected, the back roads are closed, the Zoo as it stands now is a joke, the bandshell is in need of repair. When I volunteered at Trweyn some years ago, we walked the kids many times to Logan Park and that is a lot farther than anything in Glen Oak Park is to the new school. I guess the poor kids will be held inside on all those blizzrd days.
Of course the park is a joke. The park district has no intention of keeping it up when they have plans in the works to carve it up for private interests.
Emtronics:
You are correct about the money not being raised for the zoo yet.
You may have missed that the Park District has already approved paying the interest on a $10 million note that the PZS is in the process of or has already secured. Just read the PPD minutes on line. Another waste of taxpayer dollars.
A cut and paste of the June 20, 2006 post from RALLY Peoria —
The Glen Oak Zoo ala Africa! is going to attract and retain employees???? Perhaps a St. Louis, or Brookfield or a full scale zoo …. perhaps ….. but the Glen Oak Zoo??? which already loses $400,000 plus per year and now the expansion is already costing the taxpayers more — the taxpayers are paying the interest on the Peoria Zoological Society’s $10 million loan for which the interest rate is not to exceed 3.5% for a period of ten (10) years (during which time certain pledges are exempt from counting toward the loan principal) aka $350,000 per year in interest. (Please remember that the taxpayers have not been told the truth again by the Peoria Park Board, as no zoo construction was to have started until 90% of the money was raised ($20 million is 62.5% of $32 million)
So there you have it —– money down the drain.
That is correct and once again we the taxpayers will pay for this just as we are paying for the RecPlex so the Peoria Elite have a place to sweat. I know as a working famliy man, I can not afford a membership. Building one school on the corner of Frye and Prospect which is not ALL Park land is not carving up the Park. In fact, if the PPD has any brains left at all, building this school there may spark increase in this park and just maybe they will throw some money into cleaning it up. We shall see as IMO, the Park District is the biffest black hole for money we have.
ed note: If they do build the school there and they name it after Bonnie Noble, I will slit both of my wrists.
I posted a few weeks ago how I was thinking it’s kind of sad how people in Peoria (per my small observational sphere) do a lot of complaining about changes to stuff and not much about getting rid of real threats. I was thinking specifically about the construction of a new school, about museum square downtown, and expanding the zoo vs. getting rid of a hazardous waste landfill (PDC, which I am one of the core members of an opposition group). Sad that we complain and complain about these mostly positive improvements to our town (zoo, museum, school) while so few people even gave a shit about getting rid of the dump (or at least most folks just didn’t care).
Now, I will gladly give that the whole situation is far more nuanced. But the above posts got me thinking about this again – trying to look big picture. An expanded zoo would be cool – but African animals? The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago has a big, beautiful enclosure for elephants that keep dying. Is that what they are trying to do, because our weather is not that much different here…
And Glen Oak School. They really need a new school, reportedly it’s one crappy old building (the hvac is anyway). SO building a new one is a great thing. But the school board and Ken Hinton seem to have their head in the sand, per Karrie above.
So, and I find it a bit scary that I agreed via email with Sean Matheson, that we all want a new school but simply agree on the site. Maybe that’s the way to “attack” this thing from here. The PPD and District 150 are good at being adversaries and creating them. Turn the tables a bit with this and maybe they’d come around? You’ve probably all tried this, but I’m just throwing it out there. And hopefully, for you if no one else CJ, trying to lift the conversation away from always complaining for a moment, to a possible positive view on it all.
Thanks for listening. It wouldn’t be the first time someone called me Pollyanna, so go ahead if you want. 🙂
CGISELLE,
This is why we have BLOGS, so people can complain! The zoo [maybe], museum, new school are hardly improvements, well, at least not as planned by our city “big money” and political base [which is the same]. The “River City” Peoria has more potential than most cities its size. I wish we could say the same for our council and 501 (c) groups.
SC
Seems 150 should be worrying less about soccer fields and thinking more about how to keep the kids in the classrooms learning something.