FangKC wrote: ↑Tue Jun 08, 2021 9:32 pm
I agree that KC has too much grass called parks and not much to lure people to those places. It's not just lack of bike trails. Many bigger parks don't have enough park shelters, BBQ grill setups and benches, so more people can have gatherings at the same time. Many parks don't even have good tree coverage and some basic landscaping. Some of the newer parks haven't even planted starter trees so there will be shade some day. This discourages residents from having picnics and family gatherings in the summer because who wants to sit out in the blazing sun with no shelter. Many large expanses of grass have no sidewalks through them. Some parks don't even have multiple access points to neighborhoods, and you have to walk a great distance just to reach an entrance.
People will use good neighborhood parks. Concourse Park in the Historic Northeast is very busy in the evenings.
Swope Park does have nice wooded areas, and trails, but Parks and Rec cannot even make this garden attractive. There should be more scrubs and flowers there.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Swope ... 94.5322382
The trees look scraggly in parts of Swope Park. It's not a pleasant park like Tower Grove Park in St. Louis.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0094044 ... 384!8i8192
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Swope ... 94.5322382
Tower Grove
https://www.google.com/maps/search/fore ... a=!3m1!1e3
I forget about Tower Grove Park. That's a nice park. Forest is one of the best big center city parks there is. I have never considered Swope a good "big city" park even though people always say it's one of the biggest in the country. It's more like a forested area on the edge of the city that has some nice attractions like the zoo and starlight. The location of Swope kills it. It's too big actually and surrounded by low density non walkable single family homes on the sides that are developed. Swope functions more like a state park or something not an urban park, but other than the zoo and starlight, there is no real draw to bring people there.
KC is supposed to have this grand well designed and almost famous parks and boulevards system. I do agree that some of KC's boulevards are nice, namely ward parkway and paseo. But by far and large, KCMO's parks system is a really big fail and has been for a very long time now.
KC has one park that could be amazing. That's Penn Valley Park. But it needs probably 50-100 million dollars worth of work to fix what is wrong with it and make it a truly grand "central park" for KCMO. You could tunnel portions of Broadway etc, build a large trails systems, bridges, fountains, add a cheesy attraction for tourists like a wheel etc.
It would require a total rebuild to terraform parts of that park into a single usable park but that is really the only place KC has to have a large urban park. If done right, it could be an incredible place and one of the top destinations to visit for all of metro KC.
Then you would tie the new Penn Valley Park to the Riverfront and Mill Creek, Brush Creek, Loose and Swope and then on to the suburban trails and parks with a network of cyclepaths and greenways. Then KC goes from worst to one of the best.
And don't say it can't be done. KCMO and the suburbs around KC are spending tens of millions on dozens of professional caliber soccer field complexes for some reason which is fine I guess, but if you can do that, you should be able to have a decent parks system too.