The Pretty Good Park?
The Orange County Great Park made it through the first round of value engineering with a few scratches, but otherwise well off. The largest item left on the chopping block was a 10,000 seat amphitheatre and some dedicated sport areas.
The OC Register had recently spun this vote not simply as trying to fit the park into a budget, but as a choice over the very soul of the park -- "Should the Great Park be focused on nature, entertainment or both?" read the online poll accompanying the article, despite a prominent attribution to Kathy Madden of Projects for Public Spaces urging that a park shouldn't be built with either an environmental or entertainment focus. But who needs these experts, anyway?
All this nitty-gritty budgeting is an opportunity for this week's (actually the inaugural and not-certain-to-be-repeated) Topophilia Brainteaser:
Was Ken Smith's Great Park proposal Great when it won the design competition? If so, what superlative is to be applied now that it has gone through design cuts based on budgeting? "The Great Value for Money Park"? Conversely, if the end result is to be a Great Park, how astoundingly excellent must it have been before all this hemming and hawing by the Great Park Board? "The Apotheotic Park"?