One Brick Short

Now that the city parents have decided to put a 70,000-square-foot athletic complex, including swimming pool, in the middle of McIntire Park, they should have no problems putting Meadowcreek Parkway through it.

After all, the parkway, which has been on the planning books for at least 30 years, is actually shown on the city’s McIntire Park master plan while the swim center is not.

Why, the master plan even shows the moving of the Vietnam Memorial and reuse of the road-bisected golf course along with a pedestrian bridge and a variety of other uses. Notably absent in the master plan uses is the swim center.

I’m not against the swim center. The city’s two existing pools have serious issues and cost big bucks. Still, the YMCA facility—for it will be the YMCA’s facility although the land is only leased to the charity organization and not sold outright, giving the city the right to take its land and make the YMCA move its building should the city decide it no longer wants to play—was going to be built regardless of the city approving its McIntire location.

The other site would have been at PVCC, not a bad location for a regional facility, given the easy-on and easy-off nature of the nearby I-64/Route 20 interchange, but that’s OK. The US 250/Rugby Avenue interchange also provides easy access, any time between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m..

I’m not sure where people will gather to watch Dogwood and Fourth of July fireworks, being as the picnic shelters below the kiddie playground will sprout a big building and parking. I’m not sure where the bands will play. I suppose, being as the park is very large and includes undeveloped property that goes to Melbourne Road, we could put the viewers on the golf course and set the fireworks off right after the Little League game, say from pitcher’s mound.

Neither am I terribly sure where anyone is going to park or if there’ll be a new stop light at the McIntire Park exit to westbound U.S. 250, but I am sure that we now have a precedent.

If the city can build something in the park that wasn’t on the master plan and wasn’t dreamed of in the master plan, certainly it can build something they’ve been planning for since the disco era.