By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

I suppose we’re going to end up getting “dancing waters” regardless of whether it makes great sense or not.

Mayor Sam Jones wants his $6 million Mardi Gras themed park downtown, and it appears he’ll eventually get it, since there seems to be no real political opposition to the plan. County Commissioners Mike Dean and Steve Nodine have also gotten behind the Mardi Gras park on the site of the old court house, primarily because the city stepped up and helped out in providing the money to lure ThyssenKrupp to town. Just a little back scratching.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like the concept of a Mardi Gras park with dancing waters squirting away to music and women showing their naked breasts to tourists, it’s just that our city currently does such a poor job of keep up existing parks, it hardly seems right to spend millions building another one, regardless of whether it features dancing waters or stumbling bums. (Perhaps both.) One can only imagine the condition the dancing waters, bums and breasts might end up in if we apply the usual level of maintenance to the Mardi Gras Park.

As we reported a couple of issues ago, the city has many, many park improvement projects currently going wanting. I’ve spoken with folks in the city who say the list of needed capital improvements is in the double digit millions of dollars, and there’s barely enough to keep up with routine maintenance.

So why do we want another park to neglect?

Remember when Cooper Riverside Park was shiny and new? I do. Now it’s primarily a hangout for homeless and it features toilets that don’t work because power can’t be run to them. If there’s a more lethal combination than homeless folks and non-flushing toilets, I can’t think of it.

Certainly not every park in town is in terrible shape, but there are quite a few that are embarrassments. Just in my tony Oakleigh ‘hood, for instance, there are a couple of fine examples of the city’s neglect. Washington Square, which is the kind of genuine Southern neighborhood park tourists love to visit when they travel to New Orleans, Savannah or Mobile, features a fountain with bare, rusty pipes dribbling water in such a way that it makes you want to call a urologist.

Now this fountain has been in the same shape for as long as I can remember, which depending upon how many beers I’ve had in the last day or two can be pretty long. Some folks who live around the square have decided to buck up and buy some boys riding dolphins to squirt water into the fountain, but I don’t necessarily believe it should be entirely up to private citizens to refurbish a city-owned fountain. Yes, it’s great to have a public/private partnership, but the city allowed things to get this bad in the first place.

Sure, I can see people saying, “Look Holbert, I don’t want to pay my tax dollars for no stinking squirting dolphins, especially with naked boys on them. Let the rich folks around the square buy their own pervert dolphins!” And that attitude might be OK if the park neglect in town weren’t so prevalent. For instance….

On the other side of Oakleigh is Crawford Park, a place one would never expect to see squirting dolphins or dancing waters. It’s a place I frequently take my kids, so I’ve seen what passes for routine maintenance with my own blood-shot eyes.

When the grass is properly mowed – which is apparently on a lunar cycle – the place is still usually so strewn with trash, it’s disheartening. The play equipment is OK, but the baseball field looks like something you’d see in a documentary about kids playing ball in the Dominican Republic where they use an old cat’s head for the ball, and there’s an empty wading pool that serves primarily as a place for people to break beer bottles.

The tennis court at Crawford Park is also, apparently, another great place to break bottles. I have never seen a single human being play tennis there, probably because the playing surface is as scarred and pitted as Edward James Olmos’ face, and twice as ugly. Even if you were willing to smack balls over the sagging nets and deal with the bad surface, you’d have to contend with shards of jagged glass that are always scattered about the courts. Don’t pull any Jimmy Connors-diving-for-the-ball action, or you’ll be seeing a doctor about some stitches.

I’m not just trying to pick on the parks in District 2. I genuinely think Councilman William Carroll is trying hard to fix things up, but there are parks like Crawford all over the city.

One other thing that troubles me about the Mardi Gras park idea is its central attraction seems to be this choreographed fountain Jones is so jazzed about. But when I look around, most city’s fountains frequently seem to be in poor working order. Often when I go to Spanish Plaza, the fountain there is having some kind of problem, and the one in Memorial Park is also frequently broken. I’d like to see Sam’s plans to ensure that the “dancing waters” keep boogieing once they’re on the regular park budget.

When we interviewed Jones about the park, he suggested the estimated $6 million needed to achieve his vision would come from private donations. He touted $1.3 million already in the bank. However, that $1.3 million was from deceased Press-Register Publisher Bill Hearin, who left it when he passed away. The pot doesn’t seem to have grown a dime since then. Jones never really gave us an idea of how long he’d be willing to let the lot sit vacant before he dips into the city’s coffers for the funds.

But even if private money can be raised – and that’s a very big “if” – unless the city starts allocating more funding to taking care of our parks, the Mardi Gras park is probably going to be very aptly named. It’ll probably end up covered in trash and drunks, even in the middle of summer. That should really bring in the tourists.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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