McKinley Park Takeover
An Alameda GiveAway? Take Our Park, Please.
The City's Master Plan calls for a park within 3/8 mile of every household.
McKinley Park doesn't come close. And now it will used privately?
August 12, 2004 -
The neighbors around McKinley Park in Alameda
learned that the City has arranged to let the Alameda Boys and Girls Club,
Inc., a private, non-profit corporation, construct so-called temporary
buildings in McKinley Park. This usage of public land was conceived and
planned without once talking to the public about the Club's need for
quarters as it sells off its seismically unsafe building and waits for the
construction of a new state-of-the-art facility in the West End of the
island.
About 50 adults and their children gathered in the small recreation hall at McKinley on Thursday evening, August 12th. (To view a short Windows media film clip of the meeting start, click on SMALL | LARGE.) People came to talk about how their City government is about to hand over another piece of their public open space, rent-free, to a private enterprise. The Boys and Girls Club, Inc. is a worthwhile one that nonetheless has no right to take the smallest park in an area of the city that has the least open space in a city that is already park poor.
A complete report about the threat to McKinley Park is available from The Alameda Report. Click here to download a 30 page report, (about 25 Mb, a print quality PDF file).
The Mayor is no longer accepting phone calls about the issue. So the neighborhood decided they will attend the next City Council meeting on Tuesday, August 17th, at 7:30, and demand that the City remember who owns and controls public land in Alameda. McKinley neighbors want the park to be available for the little children it now serves, and the neighborhood that sorely needs open space. The most important question asked at the meeting was, Why pit one group of worthy children against another without even consulting the community? Parents felt the adults have resources to raise all their children, if given the chance. Who's city is it, anyway?
August 17, 2004 -
McKinley Park neighbors flooded the City Council meeting Tuesday evening,
August 17 to let the Council and Mayor know what they thought of the idea.
The heart of their arguments were that no private entity has a right to
monopolize public space, and the loss of the park would be a heavy burden
for the area.
Here's an accurately scaled map of the required 3/8 mile
radius service around each public park on the main island of Alameda.
Mckinley is surrounded by the blue circle.
If McKinley is removed, the gap in public open space is significant. No one supported the idea except executive director Phillips, the Chief of Police and the District Attorney, all on the Board of Boys and Girls Club. The Mayor, herself, is on the Club's advisory board.
Citizen after citizen spoke against the park takeover. No. Wait! Nothing's been decided, announced Mayor Johnson. It seems the Boys and Girls Club, a major corporation, can't plan on occupying the park soon.
The Alameda Boys and Girls Club has resources. That's why they can build a $5 million clubhouse. Sponsors of the national parent corporation include CocaCola, Microsoft, Charles Schwab, Hewlett-Packard, Taco Bell Foundation, and more. The national Boys and Girls Club raised $161 million last year and passed $56 million of that on to local Clubs. Click here to see the National Club's annual report. (May require the free Adobe Reader 6).
