Use of War Memorial Park is a hot-button topic, though it’s more often a matter of talk than action.
Today comes news, at least to me, that 1.5 acres of the park has been given over to a Cancer Survivors Park with eight sculptures. (They have one of these parks in Memphis. Photo is of sculpture by same guy who’ll do them here.)
I guess I missed the public hearings and City Board discussions of this idea and the design. It’s a product of the private, nonprofit City Parks Conservancy. We’re doing it because the foundation started by the founder of H and R Block wants to put these cancer parks in cities all over America. If this was a suggestion raised in the years of discussion about War Memorial uses, I missed it.
PS — I didn’t miss anything. This is one of those famous, worked-out-in-private deals for which Little Rock is so well known. The plan will be approved after the fact. It’s unclear if it’s going to annex part of the existing children’s playground or be nearby (UPDATE: It’s a parking lot across the street.) The playground is to be rebuilt, and supposedly, expanded. Whatever happens will come out of existing uses, perhaps the golf course, a stepchild that the powers-that-be yearn to close.
Read on for, first, the news release, and then my efforts to get a few more details. It’s a mistake, I know, to question anything wrapped in the gauze of cancer treatment. But this is an unavoidable example of how, for all the protestations about city interest in citizen input, that a handful of people think they own War Memorial Park. I know I should simply count blessings. Another LR sculpture garden is better than a Walmart.