Mayor Jim Langfelder’s end-of-year selection of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s plan for a park on the YWCA block, renamed the North Mansion block, fell on Springfield’s holiday season like a lump of coal. It could turn out to be a nice park, as it was designed by an internationally known landscape architect, but that’s not why the mayor selected this design. He picked it because the governor and his friends offered to pay for it, as they are paying for the Executive Mansion rehabilitation. As is so often the case with charity, what the recipients get is OK, but not what they would have picked themselves. Had the Springfield economy been better, had state government not been shut down for two years, had the governor not been at war with public employee unions, then Springfield might have been able to afford the lively mixed use gathering place it has long wanted. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and CEO
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2018.
