Greenway survives second vote; commissioners debate how many parks is too many
Two weeks after approving a grant application to fund a greenway at Westfeldt Park, Henderson County commissioners nearly abandoned the project Wednesday after splitting over a state request to reword their earlier resolution.
Asked to revisit a resolution asking for $50,000 in statematching funds, the board voted 3-2 in favor, with Vice Chairman Tommy Thompson joining the majority at the last second to save the greenway project from unraveling.
Commissioners Grady Hawkins and Larry Young voted no, objecting to language required by the granting agency and saying the county had enough parks and trails already….
But Chairman Charlie Messer and Commissioner Mike Edney argued parks like Westfeldt in Fletcher are what draw many residents and job-producing industries to Henderson County.
“This is the type of thing that got Sierra Nevada here,” Edney said. “We are blessed with a lot of parks, but that’s one reason we keep moving in that direction.”…
Hawkins wondered whether the state’s request for rewording wasn’t “a bait-and-switch,” and questioned whether the county needs more greenway trails.
“We’ve got two of the state’s 41 parks within spitting distance of us here, at DuPont State Recreational Forest and Chimney Rock,” he said. There are 10 more trails on the Green River gamelands south of here, he added, plus Hendersonville is extending the Oklawaha Greenway to Berkeley Park.
“The county itself has a little over 200 acres of park,” Hawkins said. “At some point, I have to ask, how many walking trails do we need? I just don’t find many of them overcrowded.”
Messer agreed the county had invested a lot in parks over the last five years, “but the fact of the matter is we have a new business going out there, being Sierra Nevada, and this was a very important part of their initial plan.”
When he asks residents why they moved to the northern end of the county, Messer added, Fletcher Community Park is always a key reason….
Young said it seems like area municipalities are competing to see who can build the most parks, citing new or improved parks in Fletcher, Mills River and Hendersonville, as well as county plans for new parks in Dana and Tuxedo….
So, why parks and why now?
Henderson County has a total population of 108,448 as of April 2011. This is a 21.6% increase from 89,173 residents in 2000 and an overall 56.5% increase from 69,285 in 1990. In the village of Flat Rock alone, the population increased 83.5% from 1990 to 2011, from 1,721 residents to 3,159.
Numbers from the Henderson County Planning Department show a projected increase in the county population to 124,138 in 2020 and to 141,431 in 2030.
From 2000 to 2012, Henderson County approved 347 major subdivisions (11 or more lots) and 2,205 minor subdivisions (not more than ten lots). Of course, creating a subdivision doesn’t necessarily mean that building is going on, but in 2011 alone Henderson County issued 352 building permits (I can only guess at how many were issued during the mid-2000s housing boom).
All of these facts are background to my thought that areas build parks as the population moves from rural to urban/suburban. And as the population grows, it naturally becomes more urban since more people are living on the same amount of land (about 373 square miles in the case of Henderson County).
A predominantly rural area doesn’t need many parks—maybe a regional one like Dupont State Forest, but not smaller localized ones like Fletcher Community Park or Mills River Park. Why travel a distance to a park to walk when you have plenty of land around you for that? A rural area also implies more agriculture and that involves more outdoor physical labor, so traveling to a park for exercise seems redundant—maybe some ball parks and tennis courts at the local schools, but that’s about all you would need.
As an area grows in population (and buildings), the rural character begins to recede. Now there are towns and villages where people are not as likely to be doing outdoor physical labor and they no longer have large areas of land around them. Dedicating land for parks guarantees public access to green space for all kinds of things: exercise, community events, organized and/or pick-up sports, dog parks, etc., whatever that particular community wants. It can also provide a buffer between communities so that they can retain some of their individual character and don't end up sprawling into each other (and as someone who has lived in southern California, I can tell you about sprawling).
So is this all about growing pains? Or is it local communities trying to hang on to what differentiates them--as represented by their particular parks--from other parts of the county? Is the urbanization bringing with it more pressure on local governments to provide amenities to attract new businesses (like Sierra Nevada) and new residents? Are various municipalities now in competition mode to outdo each other?
I don't know, but it's interesting to see it play out.
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