Graham’s city council held a public hearing about whether and where to relocate the Sesquicentennial Park that now stands on the northwest corner of Court Square.
The sinking foundation of the park has resulted in it being closed since September 2024, with council members previously expressing reluctance to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars they estimate it would take for having it repaired.
For more than a year-and-a-half, council members have sporadically discussed what to do about the park, with most expressing support for moving it somewhere else. The location most often previously mentioned had been behind Graham’s Civic Center on McGee Street.
In fact, the discussion began in earnest in March 2024 with the idea being to sell off the property across from the Historic Court House to a private developer, and move the Sesquicentennial Park elsewhere.
In response to an Alamance News editorial on the subject, questioning her initial enthusiastic support for the selling the property – and whether she might have an ulterior motive in wanting to sell the property – Graham mayor Jennifer Talley, who with her husband owns a number of properties in the city, pledged at a subsequent council meeting that she had no personal interest in purchasing the property and promised not to be involved in its sale.
Talley said this week that the park would have to be dismantled, whether to fix the foundation or to move it. She also said that the city will continue to aggressively seek funding, Talley said during her introductory comments prior to the public hearing.
The city’s lowest bid (from one of two contractors who submitted them) was $600,000, Talley recalled. [Editor’s Note: The actual bids received were for $470,701.00 and $379,425.00, according to a staff report from the city.]
In fact, she said she had approached the county’s state legislators about potential funding, specifically for the Sesquicentennial Park, but had been told that most discretionary funding in this year’s state budget would be going to western North Carolina to provide assistance following last year’s Hurricane Helene.
Citizens who’ve turned out to voice their opinions over the last year-and-a-half have generally urged that the park remain at its present location.
And that was the general sentiment of most speakers this week, when the topic of a different relocation site was on the agenda: the council’s public hearing notice suggested that the topic was “to consider the potential relocation of Sesquicentennial Park from its current location located at 2 NW Court Square to a portion of the City of Graham parking lot located behind the Graham Historical Museum at 135 W. Elm Street.”
But the sole proponent of the new location, Graham resident Russell Compton, described the new potential relocation site as taking the place of a “courtyard,” of sorts, behind the Graham Historical Museum. Compton’s outline to the city council did not include any use of a “portion of the parking lot” behind the museum, as had been described in the public notice about the hearing.
Tuesday’s public hearing was the first time this particular site for relocation had been mentioned publicly, other than the notice, published two weeks ago, about the public hearing to consider the subject.
Compton said that the park’s current location on Court Square “doesn’t function very well.” “It doesn’t lend itself to [being] a green space, a meditative place, or a place that you could have sort of a talk or event there,” Compton said.
He said the park’s relocation to the courtyard would be an “extension” of the city’s historical museum. Compton said he is a former member of the city’s historical museum advisory board.
Meanwhile, Compton said the history of the lot where the park is now located had been, for a century, that of having a building (most recently, the former Soda Shop), rather than a park so that a true historical representation would be to allow it to return to having a building.
Compton also suggested that the city could require certain architectural restrictions to be maintained by whoever might buy the existing park property, if it were sold. He showed a photo of a potential modern building on the lot, which occupies .76 of an acre.
He said bathrooms and a kitchen could be used at the museum, facilities that are not now available at the Sesquicentennial Park. (Currently the museum is usually open only on some weekends and by appointment.)
Ted Nelson, a Graham native who now lives in Winston-Salem, had a “different idea,” he said, by putting a statue of Wyatt Outlaw on the current park site, while moving the Sesquicentennial Park to the spot Compton suggested. Outlaw was a black Republican city constable who was hanged by KKK sympathizers in 1870.
Nelson also took the opportunity to recommend the removal of the Confederate soldier standing in front of the Historic Court House. (That statue, across the street from the current Sesquicentennial Park, is under the jurisdiction of the county commissioners, and a NAACP challenge to its continued presence was rejected in state court in recent years.) “It has no business being in front of the county court building,” he said.
Nelson and a subsequent speaker suggested that a polyurethane foam substance that hardens like concrete could be pumped into the ground beneath of the existing Sesquicentennial Park to shore up the foundations to “revitalize” the park. Talley and others have said that the old basement of the former Soda Shop left “voids” that have caused the settling of the current park.
Daniel Alvis later recommended a similar process, which he termed “flowable fill,” to shore up the foundation.
Kay McMullan, formerly a resident of the city who now lives in a rural area south of Graham, called for keeping the park where it is.
She said she could not figure out how the park would fit within the suggested area.
Talley said her understanding is that the new location would include not only the courtyard Compton had suggested, but also some of the city’s parking lot behind it.
McMullan said if the city does sell the current park property, the new owner should be responsible for cleanup of the foundation.
The council also heard from a succession of candidates for council and mayor who are seeking election this fall. Calling for keeping the park where it is were mayoral candidate Chelsea Dickey and Graham city council candidates Randy Phillips and Daniel Alvis. That position was also taken by former councilman Chip Turner. “[The current Sesquicentennial Park] is an attraction for our downtown,” Dickey said.
Dickey also stressed that there are “other ways of funding” the park, which she said the city should explore. Later, council member Bonnie Whitaker would suggest that the city should approach the county commissioners about a possible contribution toward repairs at the park, since the original park had been a joint project between the county and the city.
Two speakers said that if the park is ultimately moved, they “want their money” back for the memorial bricks – or the memorial bricks, themselves – that they had purchased to support establishment of the Sesquicentennial Park. “I bought brick for that park,” Turner said, “not to go back behind a parking lot.”
Later Jill Bullis made a similar point. “I don’t want [our] family’s bricks relocated.”
Judy Hunt Lindley said she didn’t understand “why a solution can’t be worked out” to keep the Sesquicentennial Park.
Also speaking for the preservation of the park was Patsy Bailey Allard, the daughter of the late Pat Bailey, who was the co-chairman of the Sesquicentennial Committee that raised money for, and established, the Sesquicentennial Park.
Allard said that moving the park to the parking lot was a bit like being shunted off to be seated in a restaurant by the kitchen door.
“Let’s just not make this any other Main Street,” Allard said.
Alex Bullis challenged the council on what he considered to be its lack of transparency in its deliberations surrounding the Sesquicentennial Park. He said he knows contractors who would have wanted to bid on the renovation process for the existing park, but weren’t made aware of bids being sought.
He said it apparently was only posted on the city’s website, but that there was no general notice to potentially interested bidders.
He also questioned the escalation in the ostensible price of repairing the park, $600,000 cited by the mayor, compared to what he understood to be the actual bids from two companies.
Richard Wright said he was glad citizens on both sides of the issue could come together to discuss the options. “I’m glad we’ve got one,” he said of the Sesquicentennial Park. He wants the park to remain “open and active, not hidden away.”
Keith Westbrooks said the park should stay where it is.
“It’s a half-baked idea,” Alamance News publisher Tom Boney, Jr. told the council during his turn at the podium during the public hearing on Tuesday night.
Council member Bonnie Whitaker immediately went on the defensive, criticizing Boney’s assertion and saying that the council had asked people to come to them with ideas. “No decisions have been made,” Whitaker said, adding that she’s quite “frankly a little confused” by people coming here tonight saying it’s a “quick decision.”
Both Whitaker and Talley pointed out that the city doesn’t have any schematic drawings and that the public hearing is “simply based on a request to consider moving” the park.
Talley said she thinks it would’ve been rushed to have preliminary drawings. “We want you to give your opinion,” she said addressing the publisher, “not just you as a journalist, but you as a citizen. Whether you think so or not, we do listen to what you say and when you said, ‘could you go get funding from somewhere else,’ I did try to do so. I don’t want anybody to feel that they’re going to be mistreated – and I hope you’ll choose your words carefully when you write your article – that you don’t call it a half-baked idea because other people will feel, ‘if I go down there and give my opinion about what should be done with the park, then I don’t want to be attacked.’”
Talley said business owners had called her and said they don’t want to weigh in publicly “because they don’t want to get their name in the paper or be the subject of vile comments or their idea is not smart.”
Boney responded, “The many comments you’ve heard over the last six months” – and at the council meeting Tuesday night – “are begging the council to keep the park where it is. It can’t be ignored,” Boney said addressing Whitaker, “that from when this topic was publicly raised back in March [2024], you, frankly, and councilman Chin and the mayor were hept to sell the property and move the park quote, ‘somewhere else.’”
Talley said the idea was originally broached during a budget meeting in December 2023.
Boney countered that mayor pro tem Ricky Hall had originally raised the discussion as a budget request to have the park repaired. “There’s not a word from the minutes about that, not a word, but that is what he stated that he raised back in December of ]2023]. The origins of the topic began with how to repair and renovate the park – not tear it down.”
Hall said Tuesday night that he’d asked the council to look at what could be done to repair it.
Boney suggested that the council should record all of its meetings. Nobody can go back and listen to that meeting because you didn’t record it in the first place,” the publisher said.
Boney pointed out that other boards – such as the county commissioners, “which we criticized because they had meetings which were three, four, five hours long without recording, usually in their little budget workshops at the beginning of the year – have changed their policy to include a recording of such meetings. That’s what I would urge this council to do to be totally transparent because the problem is, unless you went to the meeting – and unless I’m mistaken no member of the public went to the original budget meeting , and therefore nobody can find out what happened at that meeting.”
Garner also confirmed that no member from the public had attended the initial budget workshop in December 2023.
The council took no action following the hour-and-a-half public hearing.
Read the newspaper’s editorial page views on the idea of relocating the park: https://alamancenews.com/voices-cant-be-loud-enough-to-make-council-listen-about-sesquicentennial-park/
