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To virtual and socially distanced fanfare, city officials last week opened the new Wyandotte Park in the Rengstorff area of the city, capping off a yearslong effort to bring a small park to an area practically void of open space.
The sparsely attended ribbon-cutting event, streamed over YouTube to avoid drawing a crowd due to the coronavirus pandemic, celebrated the opening of the 0.9-acre park on Wyandotte Street on Friday, Oct. 31. Though bite-sized, the park still has a grass lawn, play structures and benches, along with a geological theme of landscaping boulders and “floating” rocks skewered on metal poles.
Five council members commemorated the opening by snipping individual, socially distanced red ribbons, only one of whom had the traditional oversized scissors.
Wyandotte Park has been in the works since 2015, when the city purchased the property — formerly home to Robalee Kennel — for $2.7 million for future use as a public park. The city has since spent $3.1 million designing and constructing the park, which officially opened last week. Named after the street, Wyandotte Park is sandwiched between industrial businesses and homes, across the street from an even tinier 0.17-acre “park” built in 1999.
To say the park space was badly needed is an understatement. The Rengstorff area, bounded by Highway 101, Permanente Creek, Rengstorff Avenue, Central Expressway and Middlefield Road, has by far the least open space in Mountain View when adjusting for population, with a paltry 0.31 acres per 1,000 residents. That’s one-tenth of the city’s goal of three acres per 1,000 residents, and a small fraction of the over six acres of park space per 1,000 residents south of El Camino Real.
Building parks alongside rapid housing growth in the northern neighborhoods of Mountain View has been a key challenge for the city in recent years. City officials have contended with escalating land costs in a competitive market, and now estimate that each acre of land purchased for parks is going to cost the city $12 million.
What’s more, refilling the city’s Park Land Dedication Fund — which paid for the entirety of Wyandotte Park — may not be easy. Developers have warned that park fees could kill the viability of future housing developments.
Though public art was not originally part of the project, council members pushed in 2018 to include art features for Wyandotte Park for an extra $18,000. Taking inspiration from the Wyandotte chickens that the street is named after, the park has a small gathering of wooden, multicolored roosters along the trail loop.
Keeping even “equality” in the quality of the residential environment of “North of El Camino” and the rest of the City is extremely important to a me and other social progressives. I know I live in a ‘privileged’ zoning (R1) area in South of El Camino. Park space galore (even Annex park space!)
The fair apportionment of PUBLIC MONEY for “equal access / per acre” is just a PUBLIC POLICY problem. It is not a money problem – if you allocate ALL FUTURE public P&R spending to addressing this inequality. [Thanks for ‘the numbers’ reporter Kevin]
TRADE Cuesta Park ANNEX (YIMBY) for parkland in an underserved North of El Camino area. This ANNEX has just functioned as a ‘land bank’ for what, 5 decades? It is time to take-it-outta-the-bank and spend it on on EQUALITY OF PARK/RECREATION service.