Focus on Cuesta Park Annex Focus on Cuesta Park Annex (January 20, 2006)

Neighbors, other users ready with their own ideas for open space

By Jon Wiener

For decades, a cloud has hung over Cuesta Park Annex -- the ever-present possibility that its role as wild open space could end at any time.

But after years of pleading, neighbors will get their chance to finally save the abandoned 12-acre patch of land and preserve it in its natural state long into the future.

The city council debated the process it will use to come up with a master plan for the Annex at a Tuesday night study session, appearing to favor a series of community workshops in order to get input from city. The option will entail hiring a consultant and at a cost approaching $60,000.

"Spending $60,000, $80,000, $100,000 for a piece of property that's going to benefit this city for the next 100 years is not a lot of money," said council member Mike Kasperzak.

The city bought the property in pieces over the course of the 1970s, first purchasing the front three acres from the Higgins family, later selling it to a residential developer, and then buying it back after the company had already poured foundations. The city bought the back nine acres from the school district in 1979 for $1.1 million, once again using parkland funds from neighborhoods throughout the city.

In the last decade alone, neighbors have fought off proposals to use the site for a skate park, a dog park and multifamily housing. The whole time, the remnants of an old prune orchard, along with some wild walnut trees, have survived despite neglect from landscapers.

Neighbors now see a new threat to the Annex -- a large demand for playing fields to accommodate youth sports.

"I'm all for doing things for children," said one neighbor, Margaret Tanner. "But those children need culture and nature."

When the city council finally agreed to develop a master plan for the site last March, it created the opportunity for people like Tanner to secure the Annex's future once and for all. But it also meant that the city would go out of its way to draw the public into the planning process.

"I think people were very tired of always having to fight for it, and we wanted it to be written down on paper that it would always be open space," said Andi Sandstrom, who attended a citizens' group meeting Saturday morning about the park.

That meeting, organized by a group calling itself Save Open Space, drew about 100 residents to St. Timothy's Episcopal Church. Organizers showed off a variety of visions for the land, from a heritage orchard to a community garden to a cultural history museum.

But the three city council members there -- Matt Pear, Laura Macias and Greg Perry -- warned that the master planning process would mean other stakeholders from throughout the city would also get some say in the process.

"I'm not advocating the whole thing be sports fields wall-to-wall," said Perry. "But some measure of compromise is necessary. There are multiple needs in the community."

Neighbors say that if the council tries to use the 12-acre site to make everybody happy, no one will come out satisfied. But several council members said they favored a mix of uses at the site.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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