A Nine-Acre Gulch for a Park—and a City Council That Hesitates
Tacoma is offered a ready-made public park, but the council balks at changing Tacoma Avenue and removing a bridge near the tennis club grounds.
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With nine acres of beautiful gulch for a public park ready to be turned over to the city, the council hesitates to accept it and change Tacoma avenue so as to eliminate the bridge at the tennis club grounds. The street committee last night asked to be allowed to hold the matter over for another week to give objectors a chance to protest.
Friends of parks and playgrounds in Tacoma are loud in demanding that the deal go through. City Engineer Davis said last night that the nine acres would make a fine park and is fit for nothing else, and he believed the city should not only get this gulch but that it should condemn, if necessary, every gulch in the city and turn them all into beautiful parks.
“"The nine acres would make a fine park and is fit for nothing else."”
Tacoma still argues over what to do with leftover land—whether a gulch, a vacant lot or a shoreline becomes a park or a development. The 1909 council's hesitation, and the engineer's plea to condemn every gulch for public use, sounds like today's debates over green space and who gets to decide.
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