Desperate to Celebrate Mediocrity
This Saturday, 06 May 2017 at 10:00 the city of Fullerton is having a Grand Opening for the new “Pine Wood Stairs” at Hillcrest Park. To which the natural response should be something along the lines of “They’re stairs. Why do you need a ‘Grand Opening’ for a set of stairs?”.
Why? Because politicians and bureaucrats love to celebrate anything that can result in a photo-op, self-congratulatory award or chance to pretend to care about their jobs or city. In this case that celebratory nature has taken on the smell of desperation only slightly masked by Pine.
David has already posted a great piece explaining some of the many problems with Fullerton’s new Stairs to Nowhere, or in city parlance “The Pine Wood Stairs”. I decided to check them out myself and see what was what and I was, shall we say, less than thrilled with the experience.
All of my hilarious ranting aside there is one major thing that needs to be pointed out. Does THIS:
And before some bureaucratic bootlickers come on here to try and justify this misdirection and waste of funds, I’m looking at your Mrs. “We Held Oh So Many Meetings”, let me point out THIS:
I like that there is a “FREE Intro Stairs Exercise Class” because nobody knows how to use stairs. At least they found a selling point for the stairs to nowhere – exercise! You too can get in shape after fighting for parking in order to use our stairs to nowhere. It’s a good thing we’ve cornered the market on poorly built stairs in a park we don’t maintain (and won’t maintain), otherwise people might want to exercise somewhere convenient and then how would we justify these stairs? I mean we had to spend the Park Dwelling money on something other than buying land in Coyote Hills or just maintaining our current parks. So Exercise Stairs. Pine Wood Exercise Stairs. To Nowhere.
Oy.
I feel like the whole stairs idea was hatched late one night in front of a TV tuned to the Home Shopping Network when Jennifer Fitzgerald decided to get in shape.
In the City’s defense, the architects vision of what the stairs were suppose to look like was great. I use the word “architect” loosely though….. The finished product though, yeah, not so much. It looks like a do-it-yourself project at Home Depot. It’s just a matter of time before the wood deteriorates…. not to mention “mud slide” (bcuz we know how Fullerton loves to leave unattended mudslide damage-insert North Euclid photo here)
“In the City’s defense, the architects vision of what the stairs were suppose to look like was great. ”
1. I disagree they looked great. They looked like trouble from the get-go
2. So no no one at the City looked at the working drawings? Hard to defend that.
3. No one at the City inspected the materials or asked why it needed lighting when the park closes at dusk?
4. No one at the City explored the potential issues through risk management?
5. Notice how the City spinners are still using the conceptual picture on their PR piece instead of a real image.
City Parks Fail. Again.
Mediocrity? That’s being mighty generous. Utter failure is how I would describe this embarrassing staff vanity project. Hopefully some one will be there to record the “grand opening’ of the grand failure.
The disparity between the conceptual picture and reality is jaw-dropping. Instead of a dreamy tree-framed landscape view with the athletic fields in the foreground, you get to stare at a parking lot, all for $1.6 million. Can anybody say FRAUD? The ceremony is this morning, they’re gonna need a hell of a lot of lipstick to put on this pig.
By the time those trees were ever to grow up like that the wood stairs would be just another embarrassing Fullerton memory.
$1.6 million?
Meantime the Poison Park remains closed for its tenth year.
https://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2011/the-union-pacific-park-sink-hole-whats-next-for-the-park-from-hell/
Zoom in close on the city’s pic of the stairs. That’s cement, not wood.
In the top actual photo the left handrail is NOT compliant with code. I sure hope they got that fixed.
Yeah, and unless they finish that a way for water to get inside the whole length of pipe rail.
RAFFLE PRIZES AND GIVEAWAYS!!??
The City is a few years from insolvency you morons.
Well, I think they look good. The plan was to station a Parks n Rec employee at the bottom and charge a nickel for every climb. We would make back that 1.6 mil in about…well actually we would never make it back. But that’s not the point. What was the point? I don’t remember but Shawn and I are off for a beer.
Don’t you mean six beers?