Graham’s city council moved this week to formalize a process to seek bids for three options to address the problems at Sesquicentennial Park on the northwest corner of Court Square.
The “floor” of the park has been sinking and council members have begun discussing options for moving the park to another location, move often mentioning beside the Graham Civic Center on McGee Street near Graham Middle School.
City manager Megan Garner reported to the council that the city has been unable to obtain any informal bid estimates for doing the work at the park, so she asked the council for guidance.
Staff listed three options: to repair the park in its current location; to move the park to the Civic Center; or to remove the park and grade the top surface only of the property.
The council ultimately voted unanimously, 5-0, to begin the formal bid process of seeking bids on those three options.
The council did not include another option, which was to “close the park, remove the memorial items, and sell the property as is.”
But that last possibility, included in the council’s agenda packet, brought out a number of speakers who apparently feared the council was on the verge of razing the corner park, which was established in 1999 as a part of the county’s 150th (sesquicentennial) anniversary celebrations.
Mayor Jennifer Talley repeated her view that costs for making repairs “will be significant,” but said the council needed a full overview of the potential costs options before making a decision. She talked about the possibility of “reimaging the park.”
Earlier this year, at a council meeting, Talley suggested that the park should be removed with the lot sold for private development.
She and other council members have subsequently gone to lengths, as they did this week, to assure the public that the 450 memorial bricks, given by residents to honor various individuals, organizations, and ancestors would not be “thrown away.”
The council ultimately voted, 5-0, for mayor pro tem Ricky Hall’s motion to proceed with getting bids for the three options.
No public discussion was allowed at the time the agenda item was considered by the council, but during public comments at the end of the meeting, several people spoke for almost an hour, most notably Dr. Sam Powell, a former county commissioner and the co-chairman of the Sesquicentennial Committee that led the 150th year anniversary events and celebrations during 1999.
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With him was Bailey Allard, the daughter of the late Pat Bailey, the other co-chairman of the 1999 committee.
Powell termed the park a “lasting gift for the citizens of Alamance County,” contradicting Talley’s oft-expressed view that the park was intended to be some sort of temporary beautification project.
Powell recounted the cooperative effort between the commissioner-appointed committee that he and Bailey led and Graham’s city staff.
The committee sold 450 bricks, at $100 a brick.
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The brick and steel pergola was donated by a local business.
Powell acknowledged that the contractor at the time knew there had been a basement of a former structure (the Graham Soda Shop) under what had become a gravel parking lot. “The architect advised to put down a concrete pad with rebar and just pave over the top. I wasn’t aware of that, but that’s the way it was done,” Powell explained.
“In retrospect, that should’ve been dug out and not done that way.” Talley and others have explained that voids under the soil have caused the park’s brick floor to sink – Talley described it as a foot, Powell said his assessment is from an 1½ inches to 5 inches under the pergola and as much as 8½ inches at other points.
While the city manager said the city had been unable to find anyone to bid on doing the work, Powell said a contractor he had contacted said it would cost about $100,000.
Powell described some of the logistical complications of “digging out” the ground under the park to eliminate the voids. “You’d have to lift up that pergola metal structure; when they put it in, it took two cranes to support that, and I’m assuming you’d have to bring in cranes, lift that up, and then you’d have to have someplace to set it. Then you’d have to dismantle everything that’s there, come back, dig down, put in new soil, a pad if you’re going to do that, and the brick pavers on top again.”
Powell also relayed that after fixing the soil underneath, there was room for some future alterations to the park’s current layout. In particular, he said there could be the possibility of fewer plants. “It would provide more space and that would cut down on the maintenance you have to do,” he told the council.
“You could change what’s there so it’s not identical to what it was before,” Powell said. “From my standpoint, from the committee, I think that would be perfectly acceptable.”
In terms of funding the renovation of the park, Powell suggested that since the park had been a joint project between the city and county governments, the city should consider approaching the county commissioners. “I would ask the county for some support, as well,” he said.
“The committee – as a representative of the committee – I would ask that you do consider keeping it. We got money from a lot of people in the community and the feeling this would have some permanence to it. We can’t say what’s going to happen in the future but we had hoped it would last for a while and we hope we can come up with a solution.”
Talley responded that the costs could escalate dramatically. “When you start going down into the ground and go five feet and have shoring devices, it’s one cost; you go 10 feet, it’s a whole other cost. You go 15 feet, possibly 20, you start getting nervous about the price because it can cave in. The city of course anything happens they love to try to sue us,” Talley said.
“We have to be good stewards of the taxpayer money,” Talley said, “and we have to know what to tell the taxpayers before we make a commitment to do one thing or another. We want to do what is in the best interest of the citizens.”
Powell suggested that one preliminary option might be to get a company that uses “ground-penetrating radar” to inspect the property, but Talley said such an option would be expensive.
Several councilmen noted, as had city staff, that the park’s current condition may lead to having to close the park off “because it’s becoming a safety issue,” councilman Bobby Chin said.
The council also heard from Louise Wilson, 87, a Graham resident and the long-time former Clerk of Court. Wilson started by challenging council members Chin, Hall, and Bonnie Whitaker, who “had moved here in the last 25 years or so” and “don’t know the history.”
She cited bricks donated by various municipalities – Haw River, Mebane, and Elon – as well as those representing the Powell family, whose ancestors were pivotal is establishing both Carolina Biological Supply and LabCorp.
“Do you know that we had three governors from Alamance County, Thomas M. Holt, W. Kerr Scott – he built Melville Dairy – followed by his son, Robert Scott?”
Wilson also highlighted a brick for Earl P. Gates, Talley’s husband’s grandfather. “He was a builder here during World War II; he built affordable houses for those that had come into work at Western Electric while their husbands, fathers, brothers were at World War II fighting for us.”
Wilson said that people who donated bricks did not think “this was just going to be a temporary thing, that another council would come along and see fit to just move these or do away with them. You were given a gift by the Alamance County board of commissioners and a prior city council who accepted the Sesquicentennial Park as a gift in commemorating the formation of this county in 1849 and the city of Graham in 1851.”
Wilson voiced the hope that “there’ll be an alternative that will allow it to be repaired and leave this.”
“We need to keep that green space, and my hope is when all of this study comes back, you will see fit, if it’s feasible, that it be preserved.”
Retired Graham business owner Paul Keller took issue with the idea of moving the park. He said he was “very much opposed” to the idea of selling it off for private development.
Graham businessman Griffin McClure, owner of Green & McClure Furniture on North Main Street, underscored, as he had at a previous meeting, the multiple functions of the park “as a historical marker, as green space, as a public gathering space, all those reasons,” which he said meant the park should be preserved.
McClure said he had started a petition, which now has 149 signatories. The petition calls for “keeping and repairing the existing green space downtown is important and should be pursued.” Signers also object to the idea of selling the park off as surplus property, McClure said.
Alamance News publisher Tom Boney, Jr. highlighted the option included in the council’s agenda packet which had listed as an option to “close the park, remove the memorial items, and sell the property as is.”
McClure also pointed to that item’s inclusion in the agenda packet. Talley, however, said that option was a staff idea, not one endorsed, or even being considered, yet, by the council.
Boney stressed that the council’s “priority” should be on preserving the park. “This whole discussion erupted in the spring when the discussion was about wanting the land to become some sort of private development.”
Hall said, “The park is becoming a liability for the city of Graham, and we’re trying to find an option to keep it open if we can, but if not, we’re going to have to put fences up around it, and nobody’s going to get to use it.”
“Normally, when city property deteriorates, has a problem, you need to repair it,” Boney said. “There’s a certain degree of maintenance that’s required, and part of the reason this situation has deteriorated is that the city has not done anything in the intervening 25 years that I’m aware of to keep the park up to any kind of standard.
“I think there are some possibilities of variations in the current look, some variation in possible other sources of revenue, both the county [and] private organizations as a contributor. I don’t think anybody is necessarily saying the city of Graham needs to bear the entire cost, but it is primarily now a city-owned property. I encourage you all to have that as the priority going forward.”
