Ideas for Big Spring Park and Downtown (Huntsville, Madison: hotel, live)

[NicoleC]

That I can agree with, perhaps a "Tuesday Evening in Spring" kind of series through the warm parts of the year?

It was the 24 hours comment that threw me.

[rnc76]

Originally Posted by deesonic

I would love to hear/see musicians and performers in the park. When I lived in Savannah GA I loved to just kick back and listen to a guitarist/singer, watch an artist work, or magician or whatever on River Street or in the squares. I'm not talking about loud obnoxious music (like my band...haha) or con artist types like you find in LA or New York. Arts and music could really add a lot of character to downtown Huntsville. We don't need Big Spring Jam or Panoply as an excuse for art or music to be downtown. I certainly don't want music piped in through loudspeakers like we're at the mall...ughh

In case you didn't know, on Monday nights from Memorial Day to Labor Day (roughly, don't quote me on that), they have "Concerts in the Park". It is a lot of fun and free. Pack a dinner, a couple lawn chairs and a bottle of wine and listen to music. I think officially you aren't supposed to drink, but everybody is enjoying a wine or beer. I think it is a "keep it low key" and nobody will bother you type of thing. There is also a Thursday night "Arts Stroll" around the square on one Thursday of each month during the summer. There are quite a few local artists, musicians, even a poet or two...

Also, have you ever come across the "Sunday jam sessions"? I believe on Sunday afternoons in warm weather, there is a very loosely organized group that meets up and "jams". I love it when I see them down there, they have a bunch of drums and other instruments and anyone is welcome to pick up an instrument and join in. It is pretty cool, the last time I saw them, there was a broad spectrum of people from bankers to hippies, black and white, young and old all jamming. Pretty cool.

[rnc76]

Originally Posted by java85

i have got to give props to that comment you just made! you couldn't have said it much better. it bothers me too that a small percentage of residents in the area wouldn't care so much about driving through downtown and spend time there when they can throw a huge fit over a so-called skyscraper being developed and changing the look of a city that would prosper growth. but i have read in the Times about residents who live in the five points area and especially in the twickenham district complaining about tall structures being built adjacent or three blocks from their neighborhoods. obviously, these can't be people around my age (early 20s) babbling about some monument overlooking their neighborhoods. if anything these are people probably too old who don't want to grow in with the trend that developers want to see happen in downtown.

i had a theory before i posted this comment that if the city had multistory residences when five points and twickenham were born it wouldn't be such a huge issue with the city limiting building structures to 10 stories. hell, atlanta was born into the south way after huntsville was born in the state in 1805 and had a few skyscrapers in the 1920s. a century and a half later look at how ginormous and prosperous atlanta has become! if this city ever continued going in the right direction with development, huntsville could've became another atlanta in another 20 years. but i guess that's looking less and less likely now if we keep the same people in office for another 20 years. i know another generation of leaders will change that and the residents will be a lot younger in age. so they will be the ones keeping an open-mind!

I think there are three distinct groups: 1) the old money in Huntsville that don't want anything to change, 2) the younger crowd that has moved to Five Points and the Medical District that wants downtown to thrive and 3) the rest of the metro that could care less comprising 95% of the population. The irony is that the old money crowd are the people that almost destroyed downtown Huntsville in the 60s and 70s by doing things like bulldozing the old courthouse and building the current eyesore. I have stated on here before that I think there should be a buffer zone of a couple blocks bordering the historic districts with a reasonable height limit (maybe 6-8 stories), but let the rest of downtown develop. The buffer zone limitations wouldn't limit development much anyway because those areas are almost built out.

FYI, comparisons to Atlanta are what scares people. Most people here don't want Huntsville to become Atlanta, including myself. However, tall buildings aren't the source of Atlanta's problems. The lack of zoning outside of the downtown area and endless sprawl created the Atlanta of today. That is exactly the direction we are headed.

[Huntsville_secede]

Originally Posted by rnc76

I personally thought the Ovation condo was a wonderful idea. Replace that parking structure with a nice condo building with ground level retail and restaurants. You could sit outside and have a meal looking out into the park, then go shopping and take a walk. You could actually go to the park and spend a little time there. Of course, there would need to be a proper setback, but I think that would add a lot to downtown. Plus it is right across from the VBC, how much better of a location could you get? But as we all know, mammoth 8 story buildings alongside (not IN like those that oppose any downtown development try to scare people with) would cast ominous shadows over the beautiful park. I have heard and read that argument so many times. The problem is that a building on the north side of a park in the Northern Hemisphere CAN'T cast a shadow into the park. Perhaps they were speaking of a figurative shadow.

When I first moved here, I was excited about the direction downtown was going. The Embassy Suites and the Summit were being built with other projects on the horizon. Since then though, several nice restaurants and places to hang out have closed recently: Cafe Baba, House of Brews and Bruegger's (ok it isn't that nice, but it was great having a breakfast place downtown). A lot of the nice places downtown just don't seem to get much business despite the fact that they have 100X more characte and better service than the garbage along University. I have somewhat resigned myself to the fact that only a small percentage of people in Huntsville care at all about downtown and that bums me out. The only time they seem to care is when development is proposed, then of course they are vehemently against it because it would destroy the character of a place they never go to. Otherwise, they seem benevolent. Maybe things will start to change if they ever start building things at Constellation, or it could just kill everything east of the VBC.

LOL thats about how I see it too. Its frustrating that they want to limit buildings in a downtown area yet subdivision after subdivision most of which have the same exact looking houses in them are approved all over Madison County. I'm not a big fan of any of the eating places on University, other areas, whitesburg/airport, Jones valley, downtown, and now Bridgestreet offer much better quality and selection as far as restaurants. And as far as the Atlanta comment you are exactly right, Huntsville is doing the same thing Atlanta is doing on a smaller scale which is bad planning, sprawling like crazy. Atlanta metro area includes like at least 40 counties, Huntsville has the largest land area of any city in Alabama including Birmingham. Wait till BRAC they can't even get a road widened to more than two lanes that has the second largest high school in the state (Sparkman) and a large elementary school (Jeff road) Bob Jones is the largest and is on just a three lane road. Its all cool to want to remain small but I say stop recruiting for all these jobs coming here if you don't want to grow.

[Ajchez]

Why does everyone complain about Big Spring Park? As far as downtown parks go, it's pretty nice. I love going for a stroll there on the weekends. It's about the only time I have hope of meeting people my age (hasn't happened yet, but there is always hope). If you want to see how a park should be, look at Louisville's Waterfront Park. Of course, we don't have a river here, but the idea is the same. You can blend tall skyscrapers and nice landscaping with some decent planning. Of course, that would require Huntsville to get its act together. The amount of chaos building projects cause here makes me angry. I've never seen a city shoot itself in the foot so many times.

I wouldn't make any drastic changes to Big Spring Park. It would be nice if more of downtown was open on weekends during the day, but that aside it's one of the nicer places to walk around here.

[Huntsville_secede]

Originally Posted by Ajchez

Why does everyone complain about Big Spring Park? As far as downtown parks go, it's pretty nice. I love going for a stroll there on the weekends. It's about the only time I have hope of meeting people my age (hasn't happened yet, but there is always hope). If you want to see how a park should be, look at Louisville's Waterfront Park. Of course, we don't have a river here, but the idea is the same. You can blend tall skyscrapers and nice landscaping with some decent planning. Of course, that would require Huntsville to get its act together. The amount of chaos building projects cause here makes me angry. I've never seen a city shoot itself in the foot so many times.

I wouldn't make any drastic changes to Big Spring Park. It would be nice if more of downtown was open on weekends during the day, but that aside it's one of the nicer places to walk around here.

The park is fine, its the surroundings that suck and the city's perceived fear that adding any buildings downtown would ruin the park and our "uniqueness"

[Ajchez]

Originally Posted by Huntsville_secede

The park is fine, its the surroundings that suck and the city's perceived fear that adding any buildings downtown would ruin the park and our "uniqueness"

The downtown area does have an "Old Town" feel to it. A lot of cities planned an old and new part of downtown, so they could keep their historic section and still build modern structures. Huntsville kinda did what Birmingham did with their civic center, in that there's no business downtown to utilize the civic center.

[financelife]

Kind of hard to imagine developing a park for people to go to when most homeowners in Huntsville have their own back yards, or other areas to go to such as the river, ditto landing, etc.

A CITY like Atlanta has a developed park for the reason that there is hardly any grass areas in the urban areas. So it makes sense there. It won't make sense to the people of Huntsville to develop a grassy area more when there's grass everywhere.

[rnc76]

That is kind of like saying restauarants would fail in Huntsville because all the houses have kitchens. My backyard doesn't have giant fountains, a small lake with huge colorful fish, ducks, geese, swans, an art museum... Sometimes it is just nice to get out and socialize. I spend a lot of weekend afternoons in BSP with my family and I have a yard and parks that are actually closer to me, but BSP is really nice and I think it is the center of Huntsville. When I am there, I feel like part of the community because it is one of the few places in Huntsville that everyone goes to from all walks of life.

[financelife]

haha, I loved your analogy. You are right. I guess, I just mean Huntsvillians don't seem to care about it. When I did live there, I loved meeting my wife to have lunch at the park and watch the pigeons do their funny mating dances. Also, conerts in the park were good and as you said, free, just take your lawn chairs.

The other point I didn't make clear was that Huntsville is still not large enough to make an inner city park attractive. Monte Sano park is a really nice place to visit with its trails and playgrounds and bbq areas.