DB: Dear Mr. or Mrs. Tollefson (10. July 2008, 10:26 by Daniel Blue) ~ This Park Tastes Funny

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Tollefson,

I regret to inform you that your plaza is not fun. Not only is it impossible to have a good time there, it invokes in the human psyche a subtle yet un-ignorable sense of vulnerability and inevitable doom.

If you are anything like the plaza named in your honor then I do not fear I will offend you with this letter. I do not fear this because one can not become offended if one is soulless and devoid of human life, which is the conclusion I must draw based on the character of the plaza that bears your name. I may have gotten ahead of myself, and if so please forgive me. There is a possibility that you are such an illustrious family that many plazas have been named in your honor, some of them glorious and some, like ours, deftly mundane. I am specifically concerned with the only Tollefson Plaza I know of, that being the triangle shaped, planter pot colored mess of concrete somehow wedged into the center of a five point intersection where the Link tracks meet Pacific avenue across the street from the no-parking entrance of the Tacoma Art Museum.

As I have just described, the first flaw of this supposedly pedestrian place, is that it is bordered on three sides by a space of flows. It is actually hard to get to, and once you are there it is hard to stay. One feels pulled as if in a current, quickly past and onto the highway right out of Tacoma. Personally I feel it is repulsing tourists. There is nothing inviting about a strangely bloated bit of sidewalk in the middle of what feels like an eight-lane highway. When James Howard Kunstler was here it is reported he covered his head and ran from the park whimpering.

Some attempts have been made to “activate” the plaza, but it is as if the powers that be know they have a lemon on their hands. The activists have received little help. Attention and money seems to have gone to our cities equally defunct and yet slightly more marketable waterfront. Even when 40 or so community members are able to get together to promote an event in your space, as you can see in the picture here, it seems sparse, and even if you were driving by and wanted to stop you could not unless you were ready to leave your car in the intersection.

You need to step in here Toll, your name is being dragged through the mud. I’m just going to come out and say it: Your park cannot be activated. It must be transformed or deleted, or else you will be remembered as a very bad taste in the mouth of Tacoma.

Your Concerned Park Lover,

db