The Water is Back On

photo by me
I snapped this photo yesterday on the way home for work. After much time and effort, the two fountains in Preston Gardens are now flowing again. According to the Downtown Partnership, these fountains have not worked in over 30 years. The return of the fountains is a part of an ongoing effort to turn Preston Gardens from the once underutilized - and often thought overgrown median - into a revitalized park in the center of downtown. New tables and chairs, plants, and flower baskets have been added over the last few months. The grass is often mowed and the landscaping is taken care of by a full time groundskeepers.

Free poetry on Tuesday afternoons has brought more atmosphere to Preston Gardens, which is now a destination lunch spot for many in the surrounding buildings. The sloshing of the fountain waters now adds to the ambiance, and helps to drown out some of the other city sounds.

The Downtown Partnership still has more plans for Preston Gardens, but more concrete details have not been made available other than the Master Plan that was released in the spring. What has been mentioned here before is the need for better traffic mitigation surrounding the park to make it easily accessible from both the western and eastern approaches. Traffic continues to zoom down lower St Paul Place (except when it comes to a standstill at rush hour), and the approach (and look of the park) from upper St Paul Place is still less than ideal. A redo of the upper side median, and better crosswalks all around would do much to improve this access. Other than that, things are looking good!

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 23, 2011 at 11:45 PM

    This is wonderful news. Preston Gardens is such a gem. I am glad someone is paying attention to it. The fountains will look great, esepcially with the new Mercy Medical tower across the street.

    ReplyDelete

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