Parks & Rec Board to talk Baseball and More

The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meets on Thursday the 11th, and there's a lot of interesting items on the agenda and in meeting materials.

Before the stadium seating  (note cars, too)
(Willamette University Archives)

The main one is the prospect of a summer college wood bat league and associated improvements to John Lewis Field and Spec Keene Stadium, an information and discussion item, not any action item, "Proposal Regarding Renovations and Improvements to the Willamette University Baseball Stadium and Tokyo International University of America Softball Stadium." (The softball component has not generated the same level of interest and critique.)

But first a digression, which seems actually to be a little related.

Fairview Park: 2016 (top), 2024 (bottom)

One of the items also in the meeting packet is an update on the Fairview Park Master Plan "revisit."  Sentiment on the park seems to have shifted quite a bit, and the change is easily visible a side-by-side with the adopted 2016 plan and one of the new concepts.

People want accessible paths to walk on, passive recreational amenities, and flexible spaces that can support a range of activities. There was also some interest in active recreation and sports facilities, as well as interest in preserving the park's natural resources, especially the existing mature trees, as a retreat for reflection and rest.

The reduction to "some interest in active recreation and sports facilities" is striking. People now want the "retreat for reflection and rest." Maybe the Pandemic has prompted a shift.

A dwindling interest in "sports facilities" and associated numbers of spectators and participants also seems to characterize a lot of the debate over baseball improvements at Bush Park.

After an initial rush of support, some calling it a "no-brainer," criticism has emerged, and while the idea of more life for more people in the park seems like a terrific outcome, the new Landscape Management Plan for the park poses some real difficulties, and seems to have been formulated to exclude, or at least make difficult, things like an expansion of baseball.

Adopted in the summer of 2021

A complicated process

While the Plan repeats over and over the phrase "cultural landscape," it never made clear how the landscape functions in a cultural context. 

In fact, the word "cultural" in the plan is essentially a null and merely decorative, a red herring. We should not be distracted by it!

A reader commented on some previous criticism of the way the word "cultural" is used in the plan.

Cultural landscape reports follow guidelines established by the US Secretary of the Interior. These guidelines do not focus on assessing the past, but on documenting landscape uses and features for the purpose of future management. For example, the cultural landscape report on the Alcatraz Prison gardens does not explore American penal history or Alcatraz's role in that history. Instead, it describes landscape features such as location of plantings beds, plant material, hardscape material and the various groups of people who created and interacted with those features (prisoners, guards, family of staff), then proposes a plan of restoration and management. [italics added]

In the plan, the word "cultural" has only very glancing reference, not much at all, to culture/cultures of Indigenous People, to the post-settlement/Victorian culture of Asahel Bush and his family, and the current cultural pattern of use, embracing a century and more of development.

By means of this very squishy concept of "culture," left conveniently undefined, the plan is fundamentally a Landscape Plan meant to advance a set of barriers to change. The Art Association's improper installation of Sentinels without following protocol was much of the initial impetus for it. (Here we will strike the word "culture" from references to the Plan, since it serves to obfuscate more than clarify.)

Four goals in the summary

In the Plan there were four goals. None of them hinted at anything like expanding the baseball stadium.

While a section on "vision" included "active play," this did not seem like commercial, organized play with paid admission, but more like jogging, exploring the camas, bird-watching, informal games of baseball, softball, ultimate, and such.

Active play secondary?

In an appendix, the Plan is a little derogatory on the stadium, calling it "non-contributing" — so excluded from any current "cultural" significance or previous "historical" significance — and a "major intrusion" something to be designated for relocation in long-term plans.

"Non-contributing" and "major intrusion"

Willamette University and the baseball group will have to write a memo to show how the baseball concept complies with the Landscape Plan. On the surface this seems like an uphill climb. It will be interesting to read how they grapple with the Landscape Plan, its values, and its restrictions. It's true that the fence line adjustment is not advertised as very large, and the actual, physical changes to the park itself would be small. But patterns of use would change, and there is a set of secondary changes that would be greater.

In comment to the board, one person has suggested the baseball plan is not consistent with the Landscape Plan. They use the strong language of "prohibit," which may go beyond the actual words of the Plan, but otherwise they offer a plausible reading of the Plan. (Not the only reading, but one that is not obviously any misreading.)

the proposed expansion of the stadium footprint is inconsistent with both the letter and the spirit of the CLMP [cultural landscape management plan]....In fact, this is precisely the sort of development that the CLMP was intended to prohibit. [italics added]

Others offer more general objections based on the sale of alcohol, noise, traffic, demand for parking, light pollution, and garbage. Some of the complaints are indistinguishable from ones offered in response to an apartment building. There is a subtext of NIMBYism in some cases. 

Overall the criticism is consistent with the change in sentiment on Fairview Park. Even for parks meant to serve a greater area than the immediate neighborhood, neighbors want to keep the parks more private and quiet, almost reserved for the immediate neighborhood. There's a reluctance on sharing amenities with the wider citizenry.

This is a variation of our preference for ornamental emptiness.

• "No Ornamental Emptiness at the State Hospital!" (2014)
• "Stream of Mystery and too much Open Space: Shelton Ditch and Pringle Creek Paths" (2018)
• "The Sense of Good Cents: Ornament for the Mill Race's Emptiness" (2018)

And the way the Landscape Plan is written, with the weird veneer of "culture" and glancing references to "history," it exemplifies the exclusionary function of historic preservation.

It will be interesting to read the way WU and the baseball club respond to the Landscape Plan and whether there is path to compromise, a way to add life to the park and also to address some of the neighbor concerns. As you can see from the flow chart above, there are several steps in process, and it seems likely things will take a while and any approval or denial will not be very fast.

Previously on the Landscape Plan and on baseball old and new:

• "Power and Wealth at Bush Park and Deepwood: A Cultural Landscape Plan at the HLC" (2020)
  
• "Bush Park Cultural Landscape Plan out in Draft for Review" (2021)
  
• "City Council, July 26th - Bush Park Plan seems Rushed" (2021)
  
• Earlier this year, on the Memorandum of Understanding, "City Council, January 22nd - Urban Renewal, Climate, Baseball"
  
• A brief note on SPRAB and a newspaper article, "Meeting Bits: Parks & Rec, SCAN, Highland"
• And on baseball in the neighborhood, "Salemites Saw Negro League Star and Hall of Famer Bullet Rogan in 1921 at Long-gone Oxford Park" (2021)
• "At Oxford Park site Ericksons Supermarket building now home to Fitts Seafood and Santiam Wine" (2021)
  

Other items in the SPRAB packet, which deserve more attention, and maybe we'll return to them later:

• Budget reductions: Parks will "not offer the Kids Relays, Movies in the Park, and First Friday concerts in 2024"
• ODOT wants to clearcut for the seismic retrofit of the Center Street Bridge: "Removal of all the mostly native trees along approximately 100 linear feet of the Willamette River bank within Riverfront Park, located directly south of the Center Street Bridge along Water Street NE" and "Removal of all or nearly all the mostly native trees within approximately 2 acres of forested floodplain of the Willamette River within Wallace Marine Park." The City is negotiating on this, as it seems obvious that ODOT is not very interested in working with nature, but would prefer simply to eliminate it.
  
• And a disturbingly understated note about the prospect of harming an Eagle, a so-called "take": "ODOT is in discussions with US Fish and Wildlife Service regarding a bald eagle nest near the project area. ODOT is aware that they will likely need an incidental take permit. They are also working with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to ensure compliance with federal migratory bird protections, and in consultations with NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service regarding impacts to critical habitat of fish listed under the Endangered Species Act." Are they going to be careful, or careless, or what? [italics added]
  

Addendum, April 11th

The debate on the ball park improvements is really interesting, and links to a number of related issues in our understanding of what it means to live in a city.

The rhetoric in opposition is often really overheated, though. One person, a board member of SCAN, writes in formal public comment:

Violating the terms of deed is incredibly dangerous....It is completely offensive that Mr. Emmanuel [the public partner on the ball club LLC] has set his sights on the park.

Holy smokes.

It is interesting the way the deed is bandied about. The writer might personally know the specific language of the deed, but its text was not published in whole in the Landscape Plan, and has not been published elsewhere. Nevertheless people seem confident in talking about it as if the text were available and meaning obvious to people.

Hopefully SPRAB and the City will publish the whole thing, since there is a real public interest in knowing what exact restrictions it places on the park and under what conditions the City might lose it. There is in fact something at stake, but the thing to be warded off seemed to be the City paving streets through the park and pasture, not anything like adjusting a fence line for a baseball field.

• See "Half of Bush's Pasture Park Deeded in 1917" (2017) for a newspaper article partly about the deed restrictions, but it's not clear how much is paraphrase and whether the terms are the final ones in the legal document rather than proposed ones.

Another board member, cosigned with several other board members, offers a different take, including a different, more generous reading of the Landscape Plan. 

Two of the six elements of the “vision” for Bush’s Pasture Park in the adopted Cultural Landscape Management Plan are “active play” and “family gatherings.” These are both at the core of the plan to improve Keene Field and bring collegiate West Coast League baseball to Salem. The proposed improvements to Keene Field will not only be a benefit the student athletes at Willamette University, but will benefit students in the Salem Keizer-School District, which cannot afford to build synthetic turf fields at all of their high schools, and the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA, who plan to hold summer kids camps at the ballpark. Hosting 27 home games for a West Coast League baseball team in the summertime will be a wonderful thing for the SCAN community, especially for families and children. SCAN neighbors will be able to walk and bike to the games which will provide terrific, affordable family entertainment and memories that will last a lifetime.

I'm not sure this is exactly the meaning of "active play" the Plan authors intended, but at the same time it is a reasonable, plausible reading of "active play." If SPRAB and the City wanted to push "active play" in this direction, it could be a constructive interpretation of the Plan. Originalism and authorial intent have their limitations! The group letter also addresses traffic/parking, light pollution, and note 

Dr. David Craig, a Willamette biology professor and neighbor, stated at the February neighborhood meeting that the project presents no threat to the camas or oaks during the dry summer months.

Separately on social media Craig has signaled openness to the baseball plan, and if in his professional opinion it was likely to be harmful to the Camas and Oak, he would have been saying so already and loudly. Most of the neighbor objections to the ballfield improvements seem like they can be managed, mitigated, or are simply unwarranted fears. It is the Landscape Plan itself that seems like the biggest hurdle.

It seems unlikely SPRAB will settle anything, and the debate looks to continue for a while while the negotiations envisioned in the MOU unfold.