A GOOD PARK SLOWLY GOES DOWNHILL.

I live in a very interesting part of Alameda. Parts of my neighborhood include lots of open space, abandoned housing, an organic nursery, an award winning winery, Coast Guard housing, and Linear Park. Linear Park is the subject of today's post. I've lived near Linear Park for over six years now and in that time seen it slowly take on the shabbiness of long term neglect.

For those of you who are not familiar with the park it runs for approximately a half mile next to Main St. beginning at Atlantic Ave. and ending at Singleton Ave. It is about 115 feet wide give or take a little. The park has "good bone structure", whoever originally designed the park had a good vision and it was well realized in the construction of the park. The park invites you to stretch your legs, jog, walk your dog, ride your bike and get a little fresh air in your lungs. It is a well used park. I walk my dog there almost every day. I see joggers, bikers, kids coming from or going to school, moms with strollers, and kids on skateboards. What I also see is a park that is being very poorly maintained.

One of the features of the park is a half mile row of redwood trees at the back edge of the park that defines the border of park with adjacent Coast Guard housing and Bay Port housing. At least it used to be a feature. Now it appears to be an exercise in how to slowly kill a redwood tree. It is not a pretty sight. About two dozen of the trees are either dead or flat out missing. Most of the rest of the trees between Atlantic and Willie Stargell Ave. are showing signs of stress. This time of year healthy redwoods should be showing new green growth both at the leading tip and the points of the branches. In Linear Park I see lots of brown on the leading tips and branch points. It seems likely that the watering system got damaged at some point and the trees are no longer getting watered. Nobody in Parks and Rec. seems to have noticed. It takes an extended period without water for a redwood to show as much stress as these trees are showing.

Now generally I really like Alameda Parks and Rec., they are one of the organizations that makes Alameda a great city to live in. However, in this instance they are really asleep at the switch. So, fellow citizens of Alameda help me to wake them up. Pick up your phone and make the call. 510-747-7542 is the number for Parks and Rec. maintenance requests. Also it wouldn't hurt to call and leave a voice mail for the Director of Parks and Rec., Mr. Dale Lillard. The main office number is 510-747-7529 and the receptionist can put you through to his voice mail. Be polite, but let them know you like your parks to be fully maintained and taken care of not just sorta maintained.

Now in closing let me encourage you to get out and see Linear Park for yourself. The stressed out redwoods are unfortunately just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are many things wrong with this park that can only be fixed if you, me and other Alameda folks demand that they be fixed. I'll be revisiting this topic in future posts to cover the other things gone wrong in Linear Park. I'll also be posting a few pix. to illustrate what I'm talking about