Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Beaumont to get the boot; Barnum demolition likely

Beaumont Hospital will be evicted from Barnum School as soon as legally possible, with the likely result that the school will be demolished to make way for an 8.3-acre park in the heart of Birmingham, the City Commission decided Monday night.

No more than $1.5 million in parks bond money will be spent on the demolition and park development, the commission resolved. A neighborhood group agreed to fund any shortfalls through donations.

The commission acted with neither a firm estimate of the cost of demolition (informally pegged at between $450,000 and $750,000) nor a plan for park development.

The vote was 5-2, with commissioners Rackeline Hoff and Julie Plotnik dissenting.

Beaumont Hospital’s current lease is to expire in December 2008; the approved motion will most likely terminate the lease by July of 2008. Demolition could begin as early as next summer.

The move was in response to a request from the Barnum Ad Hoc Design Committee. Hoff, a member of the committee, opposed the move, saying it was premature. The committee has not yet fulfilled its primary mission to issue an RFP for a park designer.

Two previous Barnum ad hoc committees said the building was an asset to the community and reasonably could be put to public or private use. Others, including City Manager Tom Markus, have said the building could be a vehicle for defraying the cost of partial demolition and park improvements.

But a group of neighborhood residents that has lobbied the commission forcefully over the past two years apparently won over a majority of commissioners in its goal to have the hospital evicted early and the building demolished quickly.

The commission’s action on Barnum Monday night contrasted sharply with the process it has adoped for improvements to Shain Park. The commission has committed $3 million in park bond money to Shain, and $10 million to Barnum. Shain design is receiving close scrutiny in a process that includes most city boards and many opportunities for public input. The design of Barnum has to date received virtually no commission attention, with the overwhelming focus of most participants on termination of the Beaumont lease and demolition of the building.

“We will have a basic park, like Poppleton Park or Quarton Park, a beautiful park with grass and trees,” Jeffrey Van Dorn, chairman of the Ad Hoc Barnum Design Committee, told the Commission.

However, another member of the committee, Carroll DeWeese, told the commission the park would include play fields and other amenities that would make it a place for the entire community to recreate.

And a member of the community group lobbying for demolition, Ned Liddle, said Van Dorn’s plan for grass and trees is “just a first step,” and that Barnum will be developed as an “urban park like you would see in Paris.”

Parks & Recreation Board Chair Therese Longe told the commission the Recreation Master Plan “considers Barnum to be a community park. It has current recreational uses that we want to see maintained there and expanded. We're very concerned that if you just knock down the buildings and you put in grass, that it stays grass forever, and it never becomes the community park for all the citizens, not just the immediate neighbors who we understand would like to see just grass and trees. But the parks and rec board expects that this will be a community park that will have parking on it that will be just like Quarton is, for the benefit of the entire community.”

A park design submitted by Ron Rea and David Peterhans could fulfill the desires of many, but its cost was estimated at more than $2 million, and the city will be hard-pressed to pay for it. After demolition, it will have an estimated $750,000 to $1.05 million in bond money for improvements. Neighbors have said they think they can raise an additional $250,000, but that a commitment to demolition is necessary to begin fundraising.

Booth Park boosters raised roughly $170,000 and found that both an approved park design and promises of recognition were necessary to collect private money.

Neighbors of the park portrayed Barnum School as a safety hazard. One neighbor testified that drug dealing, bonfires and gun play are common at Barnum, though no police reports were presented to substantiate the testimony.