by Jay Kerner

One of the things we’ve learned in putting out the Joe over our first months is that all of a sudden, strangers for some silly reason have expectations that we should know things and be able to answer their questions. We’ve gotten some great ideas and some other flat ridiculous suggestions.

I got a handwritten note this spring from someone with an undecipherable signature, who was asking about the Riverfront

Park. I put it in the pile for future consideration.

When the wife makes me walk with her we sometimes head that direction, and after this year’s flood scare we went down to look at the River.

I’m a regular at the recycling center so I’m down there, but I guess I hadn’t been all the way down for a while. We walked clear down to the dock area that was built originally for the short lived “Spirit of St. Joseph.” 

I was really shocked by the condition of the former facilities. The restroom /snackbar building is a vandalized shell. What was a nicely designed ramp system to get people onto a boat at varying water levels is covered with mud, left when the water retreated. It could be cleaned up at public expense I guess but for whom?

At first glance it’s pretty bad, but I looked at the gazebo and the large expanses of concrete. It’s a nice design. What happened?

Essentially it was deserted when the gambling-boat-in-a-moat operation moved north, and it seems like kind of an out of site, out of mind thing. There wasn’t anything to go down there for and we forgot about it. The vandals claimed it and we let them have it. If this kind of thing happened at this level in Krug or Hyde

Parks, would it have been treated differently?

I called the St. Joseph

Parks and Recreation office and spoke with Bill France. He informed me that the restroom concession building is actually on the list to be demolished. In addition to the vandalism issues, the building had an ongoing battle with leaking water lines running under the railroad tracks; quite the expensive headache to fix it, apparently.

I can’t speak to the structural viability of the building, but it’s not that old is it? I wonder if other options should be considered before we tear something down that for all I know, we’re still making payments on.

I heard a rumor that a private investor has been courting the city to potentially put some kind of restaurant on that site. I don’t know how negotiations like that take place, but I sure would hope it would be a competitive situation, to ensure not only the best deal for the city, but also in an effort to locate the most viable candidate.

I want to see something nice down by the river. With all the development of the trail and the new Nature

Center, that area should be ripe for something.

Even if no big development comes in, just some surface clean up/fix up could make it look like a place for a free summer concert or a riverside wedding. After all we are a river city aren’t we? I think it’s ironic that St. Joseph’s very existence is due to it’s location on the river, at the time making us literally, the edge of civilization. Other cities have built their communities, their industries and even their identities on their relationship with the rivers they grew next to. Here in St Joe we sort of forgot about the river. For quite a while there wasn’t even access to put a boat in here in town. Many area boaters used the Nodaway ramp up north of town. The river is an asset that to my mind we under-utilize. Mr. France mentioned

Sioux City, Iowa as a town that re-claimed its river heritage with a newly re-developed riverfront district. I say lets take

Riverfront

Park back from the vandals and turn it into something productive for the community instead of the eyesore that is there now. That park could be the jewel at the other end of the Nature Trail. Or part of an all Downtown music festival with stages there, at

Coleman

Hawkins

Park and

City

Center

Park..

I’d have to say that given the track record of the Parks and Recs Department, I’m sure whatever ends up there will be nicely done. At the end of his career, director Bill McKinney will have left big footprints all over town. Our fabulous parks and parkways are the envy of cities everywhere but here, where we take them for granted or worse, we litter and vandalize them.

I hope whatever happens involves our city re-connecting with the river that was the jumping off point for many of our ancestors. Maybe we can be a River City Again.

Posted by: admin on Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Filed under: Jay Kerner, General |