Albany’s Sunrise Park is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it’s being renovated specifically to help the surrounding neighborhood, one of Albany’s poorest. And second, the process of getting it done illustrates the insanity of state and federal rules on “wetlands.”
The bike and I took a detour down Thurston Street from Queen Avenue this week. And as expected, the Albany city project to do something for the Sunrise Park neighborhood was well under way.
Sunrise Park and sections of two major streets — Hill and Oak — are about to be rebuilt, totaling more than $3 million in city public works spending in South Albany this year.
If you’re wondering what happened to the long-gestating plans to renovate Albany’s Sunrise Park, wonder no more. The city parks department hopes to call for bids on the project by the first week of February.
The renovation of Sunrise Park, first considered in 2013, is finally scheduled to take place this year now that the city of Albany has obtained the required permits and spent $38,000 in federal antipoverty grant money to make up for the loss of a patch of so-called “wetlands.”
You’re looking at the playground in Albany’s Sunrise Park. But it’s more than that. It’s also an exhibit in the story of how bureaucracy expands when it’s allowed to distort a well-intended law.
Somebody ought to add up all the public money that has been wasted over the years on studying or “mitigating” phony wetlands, that is, lands that are neither wet nor serve any of the functions of true wetlands. I’m thinking of this because in Albany now, we have yet another case.
A year later, visiting Thurston Park again
Did they ever complete the renovation of Sunrise Park, I was wondering one day last week. So, riding along on Queen Avenue, on my way somewhere else, I turned right on Thurston Street to take a look.
Tags: Albany parks, Community Development Block Grants, Sunrise Park