A resident’s entreaty on behalf of the now-desolate site of Graham’s Sesquicennnial Park didn’t seem to get any traction with Alamance County’s board of commissioners this week.
The commissioners ultimately offered words of consolation rather than pledges of action in response to the request that Graham resident Denise Heckman had floated when the county’s governing board convened its latest regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.
“My question simply is, is there anything that the county can do, or is willing to do, to help the citizens save that park?”
– Graham resident Denise Heckman
During a designated public comment period that evening, Heckman recalled that the park was originally developed in Court Square more than two decades ago to commemorate both Graham’s Sesquicentennial in 2001 and Alamance County’s 150th anniversary two years before.
Bankrolled by private donations, the completed park was ultimately turned over to the city of Graham, which maintained its pergola and decorative brickwork until concerns about sinking foundations prompted its leaders to give up on the site altogether. The city went on to disassemble these structures this May, leaving a small, open lot that Graham’s city council now plans to auction off to the highest bidder.
Rather than have the property go under the hammer, Heckman urged the commissioners to do anything in their power to preserve this revered patch of ground for posterity.
“My question simply is,” she added, “is there anything that the county can do, or is willing to do, to help the citizens save that park?”
Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, insisted that “there’s nothing” the county can do to salvage the park. This blanket assertion was contravened by county attorney Rik Stevens, who alluded to “options” that the county may have at its disposal.
“The county can purchase property just like any other entity,” Stevens went on to observe.
Neither Allen nor any other commissioner was willing to pick up on the county attorney’s hint that the county could enter its own bid for the park’s former site. The only commissioner to even acknowledged that the county may have a role in the matter was Sam Powell who, during a previous stint on the board of commissioners, had served on the Sesquicentennial Committee that had overseen the park’s development.
“I’d like to see that remain some kind of park,” Powell declared in the abstract. “I’m not sure the county has a part in that,” he added, however. “Perhaps we could get an individual to support purchasing [the property] and keeping it as a park.”
