Ah, Garden City, Idaho! Home to wide, picturesque Chinden Boulevard, scores of parks ... well, trailer parks ... and of course, the infamous Greenbelt bicycle path to nowhere! Let's be frank. Garden City doesn't have the best reputation in the Treasure Valley, falling on a desirability scale below Boise, Eagle, Meridian, Nampa, Caldwell, Kuna, Star, Middleton, ah ... let's just say it is probably at the bottom of most lists.
And in a blog many months ago which examined Garden City's short-sighted refusal to pave a portion of the greenbelt, even going so far as to force bicyclists to dismount, I poked a little easy fun at Garden City. I came up with a short quiz that included questions like:
Q: Two tourists on bicycles decide to meet up at Garden City's greenbelt dismount zone. Tourist A will ride from Ann Morrison Park and travel at an average speed of 5 miles per hour. Tourist B will ride from Warm Springs Golf Course at a speed of 10 miles per hour. Which of the following is most true?
- Tourist A will arrive ahead of tourist B.
- Tourist B will arrive ahead of tourist A.
- Both tourists will arrive together.
- What tourist in their right mind visits Garden City?
A Garden City councilman named Jeff Sousa read the blog and invited me to take a tour with him of Garden City. I'm an open-minded kind of guy, so I said 'yes.' I even took a video camera along to tape it ... only to have my video files accidentally erased a few days later.
Too bad, because I learned a lot and could show you the side of Garden City I didn't know even existed. That's because up to about five years ago, it didn't exist. Garden City it would seem really was the area's most abysmal example of poor urban development. Its infrastructure was crumbling, the city was nearly bankrupt, and land use planning was pretty much non-existent. Sousa confessed city leaders were on the verge of handing over the keys to Boise, convinced there was no way to run it themselves.
But then something happened. I'm not quite sure what. Sousa thinks it began with voters' approval to build a new city hall. He believes that created some new momentum of civic pride. It helped convince him to run for city council, and with new leadership came a noticeable changing of the guard. It was evident as Sousa showed me around.
There was the public works director detailing how Garden City is attacking a water and sewer system badly neglected for decades. A planning and zoning administrator telling me all about Garden City's new comprehensive plan, the first in two decades. A police officer relaying how a new approach to law enforcement is leading to a dramatic reduction in crime. The library director excitedly recounting stories about Garden City's outreach into its poorer neighborhoods ... "Old Town" they euphemistically call it ... successfully getting disadvantaged kids to read.
And every energetically told story seemed to have the same plot line. Yes, the city was adrift up to five years ago, but look at what we're doing now! In fact, most every person I met (with the exception of the police officer) had been in their position for less than five years.
This past week, Garden City dedicated a new park. A real park. The kinds with trees and paths and a nice playground. It is only the city's second (which is a sign of how far Garden City has come, but also how far it has to go). It's not far from a new, impressive waterfront condo development right on the Boise River. Sousa looks at it as the future of development in a geographically well placed Garden City.
But this is not gentrification. City leaders take great pains to work with the citizenry of "Old Town" to create positive outcomes for all. They are urging landowners to consider affordable housing in place of trailers, reworking land use to encourage more 'brick and mortar' development, and using what influence they can to encourage more diverse business development along Chinden. Sousa even has a dream of taking over the fairgrounds and turning into a state-of-the-art commercial center. A new downtown Garden City!
As I heard all this, I couldn't help but notice the enthusiasm and zeal for making Garden City a better place for all. Often in Idaho, we condemn government as something we would really rather not have at all, but government asleep at the switch is what created the mess called Garden City. The government there now believes in time they can fix it. They are true believers that a civic minded government can bring positive change, and I wouldn't bet against them.
Comments