I've worked out of Escondido for more than 20 years and, to be brutally honest, Grape Day Park has been a lovely eyesore the whole time.
No other city in North County enjoys a downtown park that offers so much history, beauty and serenity.
No other city in North County has so neglected a public treasure.
Framed on three sides by landmark architecture – the stately City Hall, the sleekly modern California Center for the Arts, Escondido, and a collection of heritage wood buildings – Grape Day Park should be the bustling quad of a government/cultural campus.
On a typical day, however, it's a scene out of a zombie movie, the “Morning and Afternoon of the Living Dead.”
Unless there's a rousing public event like the upcoming Grape Day Festival on Sept. 6, most visitors who drive by on Broadway will be repelled by a dozen or so bodies hanging – or lying – around.
No matter how the park has been enhanced over the years – with scattered memorials to veterans, pioneer-era attractions, a super-artsy playground – the park can seem at first glance a creepy tableau.
It's a chicken-and-egg thing, a Catch-22.
Grape Day is a scary place because it is so underused.
And why is it underused?
Because it's scary.
Before my time, Grape Day stopped being a park where families went to enjoy themselves and devolved into a tree-shaded hangout for street people killing time.
Much like North County Fair's effect on downtown business, Kit Carson Park drew Escondidans away from Grape Day, which back in the day before City Hall and the arts center had active ballfields and a WPA bandstand.
There are two obvious solutions to the Grape Day Park disgrace, the first of which is, in itself, disgraceful.
The city could crack down on the undesirables with frequent police patrols. Make life so miserable in the park that the regular denizens move on.
Such a reign of terror likely would create more problems than it would solve. Even if the pressure could be sustained, which is doubtful, detaining and questioning park visitors on the basis of their looks or ethnicity is the wrong strategy.
No, a far better solution is to figure out a way to make the park so attractive that the vagrants are vastly outnumbered.
Depending on your point of view, $25,000 is a piddly or grandiose amount of money to figure out how to reinvent – and repopulate – Grape Day Park.
Either way, that's what's available, thanks to the cagey efforts of Wendy Barker, director of the park's History Center, and Katie Ragazzi, director of the Escondido Children's Museum, which is located in the arts center.
After winning an arts grant from the San Diego Foundation, the two park champions will oversee a public debate about how to make the park more attractive, both as a physical place and as a venue for events.
For possibly the first time in its history, Grape Day Park will be viewed as a whole, not piecemeal. The notion of a dramatic park revamp has been circulating for several years but, thanks to Barker's and Ragazzi's initiative, it appears that the fundamental challenge – how to get more people into the park – will be creatively engaged in the coming months.
As it is, both women agree, the park is “dysfunctional.”
It's a harsh word, but true. It's been true for more than 20 years.
After a full review of good, bad and ugly ideas, Barker and Ragazzi hope to apply for further grants – and donations – to work with the city to convert the most promising ideas into action.
My two cents?
A well-designed coffee and snack shop inside the park; a cooling water feature that complements City Hall's majestic fountain; bocce ball court at the horseshoe pit; more picnic tables; a child-friendly playground; better pedestrian flow between the arts center, City Hall, the community pool and the Boys & Girls Club. (The park is so segmented it's segregated.)
No matter what is done, however, there will be vagrants. La Jolla's downtown park, called the Rec, has its share of homeless who hang out and use the restrooms. But they are vastly outnumbered by families as well as basketball and tennis players. Safety in numbers.
In an otherwise empty park, two or three homeless people can look as menacing as Grim Reapers. In a crowded park, they tend to blend.
Either Grape Day becomes a place that feels welcoming for everyone or the city might as well shut it down as a public nuisance, which is what it's close to being in many eyes.
Years ago, when an editor at the Times-Advocate, I used to go to Grape Day with reporters who were in some sort of trouble.
Once inside the park, we could always find a quiet table to figure things out. It was always a source of wonder how a place so beautiful, right next to City Hall, could be so empty.
“I make a point of eating lunch in the park three or four times a week,” Barker told me.
This is her way of fighting the fear that separates the city from its most precious common ground.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
