I made a mistake today ... I stopped to read the story chat comments on the Grand River revitalization story at lsj.com. Only in Lansing can a rather routine spiffing up of a riverfront turn into a debate over whether certain people are anti-tree.
I like trees, but I paid to remove some scrub trees in my back yard a couple of years ago. What was once a scrubby corner of my yard is now grass, landscaping and a vegetable garden. Does that make me anti-tree?
The Grand River through Lansing is not part of some remote wilderness preserve. It’s a long-abused stretch of water in an urban core. To that I should add unseen, too. Ask yourself, how many vistas of the river are available in this town?
The stands of trees along the river in places such as the east bank just south of Kalamazoo Street or the west bank between Oakland and Saginaw may be more “natural” than what this project will produce, but they hardly improve the river’s allure.
Starting from scratch, maybe it would have been better to make the river the heart of a ribbon park a couple of blocks wide on either bank. That’s impossible to do now, though.
So what do you do? In my “anti-tree” view, it’s important to make it easier to see the river itself. Glancing down a street upon a vista of some nondescript trees is hardly something for Lansing to hang its hat on.
If I remember correctly, this $3.2 million comes from the Clean Michigan Fund voters enacted a decade ago for the express purpose of improving waterways. So if Lansing shouldn’t use money meant for waterways to aid waterways, what exactly is left, fellow citizens?
