We can just hear the little boy in the red striped shirt and ballcap: “Daddy! Daddy! That looks just like where we put Grandma and Grandpa’s urns! Are they here?”
Welcome to the McEuen Park Columbarium .
Email Panhandle Parks Foundation Executive Director Kim Stearns and let her know what you think of the proposed donor wall.
Frankly, my first thought when viewing this is that it appears to be stations for portable barbecues. If the city is so hard pressed for money to fund this project, sell some personalized bricks, install them in some area and call it good. I thought that 20 million should and would cover all costs for this project. I anticipate the city next selling permanent reserved parking spaces in the tunnel accessed portion of the new garage – no doubt with gated access. After all, the city altered the parking requirements for new developments enabling the purchase of parking spaces in lieu of some required onsite parking.
Comment by Susie Snedaker — March 1, 2014 @ 6:43 am
Susie,
Five or six barbecue spots and a few picnic tables in an alleged city park would have been preferable to something more appropriate at Fairmount Memorial Park.
Comment by Bill — March 1, 2014 @ 7:32 am
http://business.time.com/2012/02/08/colleges-are-selling-naming-rights-to-restroom-stalls/
Comment by Dan Gookin — March 1, 2014 @ 8:44 am
“Many have already been sold”
What came first: The Wall or the early-bird Donors? Or maybe it was the advertisers first, permanent, low-level billboard second? Begs the question of who bought first and how placement will be decided.
Comment by Old Dog — March 1, 2014 @ 9:12 am
Wow, the naming rights even extend to almost everything in the park; from fountains, benches, the pavillion, sections of grass, rocks, etc.
I’m split between the “Spinner” and the “Hypersonic Slide.” Don’t know what a Spinner is but for the money ($5,750) and considering the park’s origins, can’t pass-up renting a spinner in the middle of a playground. My guess is someone else already got it so I think I will keep as my backup a “Fun Rock” and one of those is only $4,025.
For a complete list with price tags:
http://panhandleparksfoundation.org/mceuen-amenities/
Comment by Old Dog — March 1, 2014 @ 10:49 am
As I understand it, the Parks Foundation is a separate 501 (c)3 entity that is separate from the city of Coeur d’Alene. If they are the sole administrators (sellers) of these items, what percentage of the donations do they receive for their efforts? In looking at the sales list, it appears that this tax funded park is for sale to the highest bidder – and that would not be each and every taxpayer.
Comment by Susie Snedaker — March 1, 2014 @ 11:09 am
The donor wall sketch is really really tacky. I have an idea, why don’t we go one step further and erect a huge electronic billboard at the base of tubbs hill and run the photos of all the donors continuously……For 10,000 you can have your photo appear every hour. For 50,000 it will appear every ten minutes. Maybe we could have a couple of dozen outdoor speakers over the park playing the donor’s favorite song. Of course, that will be another 50,000 per year extra. This whole thing is coming together nicely as it was intended, to add commercial value to the landowners of the downtown parcels as the expense of the people of Coeur d’ Alene. It is a wasteful financial resource burdening the people of the city for a very select few. McEuen park, McEuen field was prized for years as a place of contemplation and individual thought and activity for everyone to enjoy. It now becomes this “thing” of greed and arrogance, a giant advertisement for one purpose and one purpose only, to line the pockets of the very few….McEuen Park is the fun room attached to every McDonalds to get us to buy big macs
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 1, 2014 @ 1:37 pm
Narcissistic to say the least. It’s a vanity wall and that’s about it. Borders on a social personality disorder. “Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder[1] in which a person is excessively preoccupied with personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity. This condition affects one percent of the population.” Depending on how many names they get – might be more.
Comment by Stebbijo — March 1, 2014 @ 5:33 pm
Steb,
That’s funny. What does it say about certain Cities that spend the first hour of every half-hour meeting handing out trivial awards, plaques, slaps on the back and the like? And if the definition does translate to cities, what can we expect to happen to the future of cities?
From the Greeks – The myth of Narcissis did not turn out so well.
Comment by Old Dog — March 2, 2014 @ 10:03 am
Steve B.,
I actually think you really did describe the future operation of at least the “Harbor House” portion of the McEuen Plan. Who do you think will buy the naming rights and concession contract, perhaps the same company that will sell cruise boat tickets who can depart a mere 50-feet away? And with the pavilion so close wouldn’t surprise me that the primary user will be those who just got off one of the Resort’s boats, or are about to get on one–or are attending another function at the Resort.
The Resort currently does not have a central ticketing outlet or enough outdoor space downtown for all their ventures and attractions, now they will and they’ll sell a few sodas along the way. And with the added exclusive bus parking gifted with the closure of Front between 2nd and 3rd, its a logical fit. The electronic billboard as you described will also be paid for by the Resort–and why not, they will be the ones who ultimately control use of the major park amenities and use of the shoreline when the launch is closed.
Maybe I should call this “Pessimist Sunday”, doesn’t really flow off the tongue without a little spitball, but for now it’s all I have.
Comment by Old Dog — March 2, 2014 @ 11:41 am
I just have to hand it to the financial interests of the old downtown of Coeur d’ Alene. No doubt that this caper to hijack McEuen field was hatched a long time ago on a napkin during a quiet lunch at the Hayden Lake Country Club. Old Dog, you are very correct about who benefits. I recall Duane Hagadone going apoplectic when he learned that certain entertainment facilities in Boise
were financed by public money. Well Duane, this McEuen grab is the horse of a different color. Congratulations on your acquisition. Vladimir Putin could not have orchestrated this invasion any better. 🙂
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 3, 2014 @ 5:30 pm
The words of Jonathan Winters in the old film “The Loved One” come to mind. The owner of classy cemetery discovered he could make more money building houses, something like that. He leaned back in his huge chair and pondered, “How can I get those stiffs off my lawn.” Congratulations to all the high rollers of the city. You got us off your lawn!! Or should I say, “our lawn!”
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 3, 2014 @ 5:38 pm
Steve,
Or as the good Duane Putin would put it, “You want rutabaga fries with that?”
Just wait til he unveils the new cruise boat that will be parked (indefinitely) along the seawall after he “trades” the boat launch for a scrap next to his crab shack on Lakeshore Drive.
Like most bar napkins, only after fully unfolded, do they show the whole drawing.
Comment by Old Dog — March 3, 2014 @ 7:13 pm
And think about it–Duane just happens to own a huge collection of parcels above the Beach House Marina that he has already planned as a mixed-use PUD. It’s been approved once, so why not again. Only this time it will be with the support ($) of LCDC who have recently been chumming the waters with an East Sherman District.
Can’t conceive of a better way to get water and sewer to his PUD and along the way–Annex Lakeshore Drive, Silver Beach Loop and the rest of those pesky anti-boat race people. My guess is he already has an offer on the table to buy Tony’s Supper Club.
Hook, line, sinker.
Comment by Old Dog — March 3, 2014 @ 7:32 pm
Perfectly Executed. The kool-aid is sweet at first.
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 3, 2014 @ 8:11 pm
Fun to read all of your creative ideas! I want to know where they will have the BIG sign that says
“Thank you to the TAXPAYERS of Coeur d’Alene!”
Comment by mary — March 3, 2014 @ 9:23 pm
Oh, It will be there Mary, a old board with those words scratched in, half buried somewhere in the back row
of red geraniums
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 4, 2014 @ 6:35 am
We need to make a fun list of the 100 surgeons who replaced the “city with a heart” with their own brand of heart.
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 4, 2014 @ 6:56 am
Mary,
No need for a single big sign, the County already sends out thousands of little signs twice a year in the form of your (always rising) property taxes. Read close and between the lines and you will see, “Thanks for subsidizing another for-profit development coming soon to your neighborhood, but not mine.”
Comment by Old Dog — March 4, 2014 @ 8:26 am
Please excuse my extended thoughts today……
As all of you are quite aware, there are very few people in elected or appointed persons in the city who have as his or her sole mission, to protect, defend or further enhance the opportunities of the solid base of just ordinary citizens of Coeur d’ Alene.
Many great planning commission members of years past took on that defense with passion, who could care less about their “position” in town. They stood up in front of those television cameras and faced down the powerful, insisting that parts of beaches on Sanders stay in public access as they always had been, public access in the Coeur d’ Alene Resort properties, keeping the boat launch ramp there and publicly accessible, keeping our parks for all the people of the city. They did all they could do to legislate continued public ownership. Our planning commission has been compromised by the rich. They are only a name on a piece of paper, that’s it.
The challenges continue. Is the new publicly owned parking garage going to remain for public access or will those stalls be purchased and cordoned off from what they describe under their breath as “the little people?” Who is going to insist that not one sliver of Tubbs Hill falls into private hands? Does the public have a seat at the table when the powerful marches along the shoreline gobbling up land for absolute private use? Will there be a library for them instead of a temple that they can’t afford buy the gas to get there?
You all have that passion to protect and enhance and are working hard, doing your part in this battle, But, we must find charismatic young leaders in town to help us, who will not be compromised, who will fight in the street, who don’t have a Jaguar, who steer a minivan full of their little kids just looking for a place to put their feet in the water. Will every public space Coeur d’ Alene have a price they cannot afford? It sure looks like that’s exactly where it will end up.
I don’t know how to wake up this public indifference in Coeur d’ Alene, allowing all public rights to be compromised by the rich. I believe we need new young partners in this struggle. Are they out there?
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 5, 2014 @ 5:59 am
Steve,
OpenCdA has no objection at all to its readers expressing their extended thoughts. Thanks for expressing yours.
We hope readers note that in your comment today, there was no partisan attribution. You very properly pointed out behaviors that are bad for the community. Unfortunately, too many people in Coeur d’Alene are too eager to attribute the bad behaviors to one political party or the other. That attribution becomes a convenient diversion but serves no purpose at all.
My observation over the years is that corrupt politicians and racketeers see political partisanship as just another tool to either attract, retain, and exploit the gullible or marginalize those who disagree and oppose them or their corrupt and criminal behaviors. In that regard, Coeur d’Alene is little different from Annapolis, Maryland, or Richmond, Virginia, or Austin, Texas, or Sacramento, California, or Olympia, Washington, or Salem, Oregon, or Albany, New York.
Coeur d’Alene has its share of corrupt officials and racketeers. Unfortunately we also have participants in the alleged criminal justice system and two area newspapers that are completely willing to turn a selectively blind eye to the corrupt and illegal bad behaviors, because after all, they benefit from those behaviors.
You are correct when you suggest that we need to find charismatic young leaders in town to take up the battle and fight in the street. However, we need to be careful that they are not just substituting their form of corruption and racketeering for the one we hope they will displace. My concern is that those who could stand up for that high standard are the very ones who are being driven away. And who can blame those who recognize and feel helpless against the bad behaviors for wanting to escape?
Comment by Bill — March 5, 2014 @ 6:53 am
Bill, I recall a conversation at my garden center years ago. She moved away from Coeur d’ Alene, convinced that it was hopeless trying to make a real difference. I am afraid that has and continues to happened to a lot of us over the years.
Additionally, we learn be careful for what we dream…it might come true. There have been a number of persons in the city who became compromised for any number of reasons. Compromise takes many forms. Almost the entire group of activists of the eighties and early nineties in Coeur d’ Alene have chosen to be “Martini liberals,” blindly standing by or actively carrying the banner of initiatives that would never even considered in their younger days of fire and passion. They just got tired, I guess, or they wanted to get invited to the important summer parties!
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 5, 2014 @ 7:35 am
I’d carry that flame if need be. Unbeholding yet active, reasonable within the scope of realities,. Steve I remember your running for mayor, I was the sole quixotic right in back then.
Those were the days and quite frankly that was when the pedulum made its swing and as always, some like it, and some don’t, with a majority of indiffernce either way.
What I do know is I love this community and the United States as a whole. I love this do as you please country, for all of its inequalities, its follies, its logical contradictions, and even its exploitation. I however, have no love for the severe order that could replace it to bring and enforce social justice. I will admit that I’ve sought refuge in sarcasm and joking like others from time to time and realize that those are poor traits in a sincere volunteer, or any movement requiring zeal, self sacrifice, and total conviction.
How may I differ? To me, the “dictatorship” of the proletariat, the everyday person, is a long clumsy euphemism for Plato’s Republic, which is the benevolent forcible rule of the many by the intelligent few. He called these few the guardians of the state and I often get the impression that the Republic is at hand in the perception that the many cannot rule themselves and that they must drift into ever greater sloth, indifference, self seeking, dreaminess and last but not least, moral decay. As always power flows to the cunning and the rule of the many is the rule of money.
I can’t help sometimes to think Coeur d’Alene as it exists today is a laboratory specimen of the process, far advanced. Our peculiar squandering, our fantastic luxuries, our silly TV dream world, are perhaps merely the rouge and lipstick that heighten the look of a perspective lost community.
Is Coeur d’Alene or the country for that matter to complicated a machine to be left to people like you or me and to the loose vagaries of a constitution written by eighteenth century deists? I don’t know. Somewhere along the way we lost or forgot natures tough elimination process that brought forward the best men and women of talent and will, who could run our social machine simply for the good of the people. Instead, the ideas of a classless society and of a state that will wither away are the golden myths Plato prescribed to keep the many happy while wise masters rule.
Yeah well, all the same it is wonderful to be free. It’s wonderful that we can talk here unchallenged and untouched. It’s wonderful that even after our words here we can go about our business and do as we please and spend our money foolishly or wisely and consult nothing and nobody but our own conscience and indeed live opposite of our noble statements.
I do understand a compelled and directed society; it is what I believe in but is there no room left for the conscientious disobedience of Thoreau? Are we that far gone? But, as Steve mentioned, a new approach in person and perspective, and planted in my heart at least and perhaps in some others, the most unexpected seeds of hope, that there is some mysterious eccentric cog in spirit of our little world that can make our society possible after all.
Comment by Eric — March 7, 2014 @ 2:00 pm
Good Good Stuff Eric……thank you
For the past year, I have been plugging away at a second writing, which deals with the young idealists who led the marches for civil rights and disrupted the war machinery of that terrible Viet Nam stain on America. This summer I am returning to the south and that area of Mississippi where lives were lost for freedom. I cannot write about it until I listen for it once again. It was so easy then to stand with others for injustice. Where did those young revolutionaries go in America shouting in the streets? Well, corporate America and the bean counters have got them chained to mere survival. If they miss one car payment, life is over for them. If they get one bad performance review or walk off a job, they will be relegated to the untouchable class. It’s tough out there for revolutionaries.
For the ruling class in Coeur d’ Alene, their beautiful life is “Pleasantville” and they will do anything to keep it that way. I was fortunate in my work to be a part of and understand the great values of the working class of our city, to understand the difference between “chicken shit and chicken salad.” To break these terrible bindings of this Pleasantville attitude it will take revolutionaries and the sacrifices are great. I welcome your spirit to jump right in there.
I too love the city and my country and love our freedom to express. I want that for every person. The battle starts on Sherman Avenue 🙂
Comment by Steve Badraun — March 7, 2014 @ 6:02 pm
Very beautifully written words. There is this lecture on the Idaho Supreme Court website by a former Senator, Denton Darrington. He was replaced by Dean Cameron because of redistricting. But, he served Idaho for 15 terms and I believe drafted many laws for Idaho and also was Chair on the judiciary committee. He talks about the Constitution and our responsibility in educating folks about this founding document and other issues.
Folks do not have the time to be ‘civic’ anymore and as Steve states, “Well, corporate America and the bean counters have got them chained to mere survival. If they miss one car payment, life is over for them. If they get one bad performance review or walk off a job, they will be relegated to the untouchable class. It’s tough out there for revolutionaries.”
I know that our Judges do not judge without bias, they judge to benefit themselves or somebody else. Now that I have read our own Governor ended up in a porn movie, I will await to be ‘entertained’ by the next story toe tapping story because that is all I can get out of this mess. Ick. Ick. Ick.
Comment by Stebbijo — March 7, 2014 @ 8:05 pm
Steb, I personally know three local judges and a few other judicial people and I know for a fact that they are good and sincere people especially as it pertains to their judicial duties. They are not bias not out for themselves not even close. Granted there may be some out there that fit you claim but not the ones I know.
Comment by Eric — March 7, 2014 @ 9:26 pm
Hey Steve, thanks for the reply, I think we’re on the same wavelength. I have to admit that some of what I posted are words from an opening statement I wrote back when we were running. I didn’t use it then and I took from memory and applied it to today.
I wish I saved all the stuff from back then.
Comment by Eric — March 8, 2014 @ 7:55 am
Eric, unfortunately, I do not know any judges personally so I can assume they are biased, but I can see where a personal relationship with a judge would not hurt matters much if one ended up in the court system. I have known a few judicial folks too, and believe they are wretched people.
Comment by Stebbijo — March 8, 2014 @ 8:32 am
Indeed Steb it takes all kinds to make a world. Knowing a judge personally doesn’t “help” unless i were to lie about the relationship should I have the misfortune to be before one. As shown by my last jury duty assignment.
saddly there are wretched people in all walks of life but for example just because there might be a crooked policeman doesn’t mean law enforcement as a whole is bad or should be disbanded.
Same with Schools, churches and on and on,.
Comment by Eric — March 8, 2014 @ 8:51 am
Steve,
I rarely recommend books, but parts of the socio-economic shift you seem to want to explore appear to be central to, “Fear of Falling” by Barbara Ehrenreich, first published in 1990 by Harper Perennial. From my own personal perspective lately, I have been reflecting on my public service and what it means–a refresher read is in order.
Thanks.
Comment by Old Dog — March 8, 2014 @ 8:51 am
Old Dog,
I just checked, and the Cooperative Information Network Library System has a few of Barbara Ehrenreich’s books. Unfortunately, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class is not one of its holdings.
Comment by Bill — March 8, 2014 @ 9:04 am
Steve, I understand your position,and mine would be most likely the same as yours ‘if’ I knew a judge personally. I am not picked for jury duty anymore, most likely for obvious reasons. 🙂 In the meantime, I think I will check out Old Dog’s recommendation on that book. However, we don’t really think of ourselves as middle class, more like ‘upper poverty’ but it sounds interesting. It is on Amazon for under 5 bucks, used.
Comment by Stebbijo — March 8, 2014 @ 9:25 am
I would gladly loan my copy if I knew where to send or deliver.
Comment by Old Dog — March 8, 2014 @ 12:42 pm