Those hoping to reexamine some of the planned uses of Jones Point Park following completion of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project achieved a timeline breakthrough Tuesday night at a City Council work session. They also may have lost some of their clout.
After months of fearing that the design plan for future park usage developed by the Yates Gardens Civic Association would not be considered by the National Park Service, the owner of Jones Point Park, residents were told by Audrey Calhoun, superintendent, George Washington Memorial Parkway, "We will give you all the time you need.
"We are not going to move forward until the city provides us with a plan. However, if that plan is delayed beyond the point when demolition of the existing bridge begins, you may have to settle for a walk-in park without any road."
Her response came in answer to a question from Mayor William D. Euille who questioned the decision timeline proposed by Kirk Kincannon, director, Alexandria Recreation, Parks & Cultural Activities Department. It called for forwarding the city's proposal to the National Park Service by March 22.
Euille said, "I don't think that this schedule of meetings and arriving at a decision is realistic. We should take the time to do this right."
He also indicated that he had some conversations with Calhoun and that the Park Service was willing to work with the city. He then asked Ronaldo "Nick" Nicholson, project manager, WWB Project, when demolition of the existing bridge was scheduled to commence.
"May 2006," Nicholson said.
TUESDAY'S WORK SESSION followed a previous council briefing session Feb. 8 by the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Neighborhood Task Force and a regular meeting of that task force at Lyles-Crouch School Feb. 16. It was during the latter meeting Kincannon first circulated the projected timeline.
During the Feb. 16 meeting, city officials indicated, "The drop dead date for submission to the National Park Service is the end of March or early April." Richard Baier, director, Transportation & Environmental Services, said at that time, "The Park Service wants to wrap this up in no more than nine months."
Based on Calhoun's statement, that deadline now appears mute.
In order to achieve a consensus both on development proposals for the park and parking requirements to complement those proposals, Euille announced that he was forming a new "hybrid" task force "that represents all the interests" impacted by the park.
Most of the citizen/city interaction regarding the park up to now has been through the Neighborhood Task Force chaired by Euille.
"This new hybrid task force will hopefully be able to reach a compromise on the various issues in order to achieve a solution everyone can live with," Euille said.
"Please understand this is not a City of Alexandria park. It belongs to the National Park Service and it is for the use of the region," he said. The new task force will be composed of members from the Neighborhood Task Force, the stakeholders group, city officials and others, according to Euille.
DRIVING THE DISCUSSIONS at both Neighborhood Task Force meetings and council work sessions are two basic elements pertaining to the park's future development: The creation and placement of potential athletic fields, and parking. Each is linked to the other.
In opening the work session, Euille gave a brief history of how the previous City Council arrived at the decision to approve the park development plans. At that time parking in the park was not a perceived problem because it was all to be located under the new bridge as had been the case for years with the existing bridge.
"What has precipitated us to now revisit this is the security concerns raised by 9/11 and the restriction of no parking under the bridge coupled with the need to find other parking," Euille said.
It was also pointed out by several council members that 9/11 also changed the restrictions placed on the use of the mitigation money to be used by the city for park improvements. Both councilmen Ludwig Gaines and Andrew Macdonald said, "We didn't have a parking problem before 9/11 and that has now all changed."
BOTH THE MAYOR and most council members expressed the feeling that the WWB Project should be willing to lift the restriction of where the mitigation monies can be used by the city. "Mitigation monies have been used for wetland preservation hundreds of miles from the project," Councilman Paul Smedberg said. "Why can't they be used here outside the immediate bridge area?"
In answer to Smedberg's question, Nicholson said, "As far as we [the project] are concerned 9/11 changed nothing." That brought an immediate adverse response from both council members and those attending the session.
Kincannon has pointed out at various meetings that the development plan as created prior to 9/11 was based on a "three-legged" concept. It takes into consideration, athletic and recreational needs, river access, and historic preservation, according to his descriptions.
Joining Kincannon at the work session to elaborate on the historic preservation aspects was Jean Taylor Federico, director, Historic Alexandria. "We have planned to create an historic zone and interpretive trail," she said
The southern area of Jones Point Park represents one of the best examples of an archeological history site in the capital region, according to Federico. For this reason she was arguing against reestablishing the athletic fields south of the new bridge.
This caused Macdonald to point out, "The two most important elements of the park in relationship to the region is historical and access to the river. Are we trying to do too much by also using it for local recreation?"
THE SUGGESTION to place an athletic field under the bridge was resisted by both Kincannon and Federico. The former argued it would interfere with bridge maintenance over the years and the latter expressed concern about an adverse impact on historical preservation.
However, the original plan, pre 9/11, called for hundreds of parking spaces under the bridge. These would have been occupied on a daily basis as opposed to an athletic field that could be taken out of use for short periods of potential bridge maintenance. Their daily presence could have also had some perceived impact on historic preservation in the long term.
Although the timeline called for a public hearing to be held March 2 on the Jones Point Park proposals, that is now subject to the formation and deliberations of the new "hybrid" task force. No new date was established at Tuesday's meeting.