Would Winslow get all the money?

To some, that was the fear. In the first few years of the all-island city created by voters in 1991, naysayers said tax dollars would be funneled out of greater Bainbridge and into the historic town center for pet projects there, while islandwide road maintenance and other needs would suffer. Those post-annexation divisions have largely faded from memory, but you can hear echoes – albeit in reverse – in recent objections to the selection of a Manzanita parcel as the city’s next big open space purchase.

All of the city’s open space funds, the argument goes, are being spent outside of Winslow, while downtown dwellers feeling the pinch of densification are left wanting for new recreation areas of their own. What we really need, east Winslow activist Neil Johannsen argues, are “parks for the people.”

Johannsen has a point. Of the original $8 million in open space bond funding voters approved in 2001, all but $800,000 (for the 12-acre Hawley Cove Park that links Wing Point with Eagle Harbor) ended up being spent outside of town. “Winslow is at risk to become the ‘projects’ of the island,” says Johannsen, who co-chaired the open space bond effort, “hundreds of condos and apartments, commercial space, parking lots and roads – bereft of neighborhood parks, greenways, trails and tot lots.”

It’s not for lack of effort, counters Andy Maron, long-time Open Space Commission member and former councilman. “You wouldn’t believe how much time we have spent trying to buy Winslow properties,” Maron says. “It is a high priority for us. But, we can’t force someone to sell to the city.”

So Maron has a point too. Given that most of the island’s undeveloped tracts can be found outside of Winslow, it stands to reason that the best and most readily available opportunities for open space will be found there. Simply identifying vacant lots that “would make good parks” in Winlsow isn’t enough; the open space program is predicated on a willing-buyer/willing-seller ethos, and if downtown owners don’t want to part with their land, the public is out of luck. Acquisition by eminent domain would take a radical and politically unpalatable shift in the city’s approach. (Condemnation has only been used once, to buy the “Woody house” in the middle of Waterfront Park in 1993. You know it today as the east end of the Commons building.)

Can those two realities – the dearth of park opportunities in town, the relative wealth outside – be reconciled? Maximizing Winslow’s current park inventory may be one way. There’s some $5 million worth of enhancements earmarked for Waterfront Park over the next six years, everything from picnic shelters to a new dock. Meanwhile, at the other end of town, the city could hasten reclamation of the strawberry pier property at the foot of Weaver Avenue; there, a vast asphalt wasteland at water’s edge just begs to be dug up and turned into a grassy public green. And we already own it.

Does buying land outside of Winslow today preclude buying land in town later? The city’s capital plan anticipates future voter-approved bonds for amenities that could include open space. And islanders have historically shown great willingness to pony up – witness the Grand Forest and Gazzam Lake votes, which preceded the open space bond by years.

We hope opportunities come up around town. But until someone wants to sell their vacant lot, our next new park will be elsewhere.