A long-simmering dispute over the relocation of a closed park in Crystal City finally seems resolved – although some city residents are still understandably skeptical.
At its June 29 meeting, the City Council voted to accept a contract to build a Street Department facility on a 4-acre tract of land along Chestnut Street. However, that site, a small portion of the 232-acre former PPG glass plant property the city now owns, has long been targeted by Ward 1 residents and Park Board members as the perfect spot for a park.
The council offered instead to work with a group of residents to develop a park at a 5-acre tract adjacent to the Little League complex on the south end of town.
It’s been more than six years since the de facto closure of “Hickey” White Park and a promise by city officials to secure a replacement site. The park, on the southern border of the city, was named for a Crystal City High School basketball standout, 7-foot-tall Darrell “Hickey” White, who died in 1977 of a blood disorder shortly before graduation.
Hickey was two years behind me at CCHS. I knew him, although we didn’t move in the same circles. To say I’m not much of an athlete is almost as big an understatement as saying he was “pretty good” at basketball.
But, like most Crystal City kids, I was well aware of what went on at the park that would later bear his name. Players came from Ward 1, which has the largest population of Black residents in the city, but also from other wards and even other towns. Many of the kids who honed their skills there went on to play successfully in high school and college.
Aspiring hoops stars could play elsewhere, sure; but if you wanted to measure yourself against the best of the best, it was understood that the game at Hickey White Park was the big show.
Brian White, Hickey’s younger brother and no slouch himself at basketball, speaks fondly about those games, those players and that camaraderie.
“There was more done to promote racial harmony and understanding on that court than just about anywhere else in town,” he said.
The city voted in April 2014 to discontinue maintenance on the park, which lies on the “wet” side of the Twin City flood protection levee. The park was not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and its fences, courts and ballfields were deteriorating.
City officials decided tax money would be better spent developing a new location than trying to renovate that site.
Almost immediately, the eyes of residents and Park Board members turned to the PPG property. Its location, smack dab in the center of the community and within sight and earshot of dozens of homes, would make it easy for families to keep a watchful eye on their children. It would be easily accessible from most of Ward 2 as well. A park there would elevate nearby property values.
In short, the Chestnut Street site checked all the boxes for a relocation of Hickey White Park. Ward 2 Councilman Tony Becker authored a proposal to do so, and then-Park Board President Rick Earls said there was $50,000 earmarked for the project.
But in March 2015, nearly a year after the park closed, the council rejected Becker’s proposal, saying they preferred to use that site for commercial development, and vowed to continue to seek a different solution.
The city sent the Park Board a list of 11 possible properties (seven owned by the city and four by individuals), but the board rejected all but one as too small.
The remaining site, just south of the Little League fields, is owned by the Twin City Levee Commission. In October 2015, the late Ken Duncan, then a councilman and a member of the commission, led a tour of the site.
In an open forum shortly afterward, residents overwhelmingly rejected the idea of putting the park there, again pointing to the Chestnut Street site as ideal.
It was a stalemate.
“The city kept saying, ‘Well, we don’t want to put a park where the residents don’t want it,’ but they wouldn’t listen when we kept telling them where we did want it,” said Sharon Riney, a Ward 1 resident who has repeatedly voiced displeasure over how long it has taken to resolve the situation. “They were dragging their feet, waiting us out. It’s what they always do.”
There the matter stayed until late 2019, when the city began the process of relocating its Animal Control and Street Department facilities from Hug’s Landing Road to the Chestnut Street site.
Ward 1 residents again protested, urging the city to relocate Hickey White Park there instead, and restating their misgivings about the unsightliness, noise and smell of having a maintenance facility and dog pound so near their homes. Not so great for property values.
Ward 1 residents could easily have made a Great Big Deal out of this, marching on City Hall with signs and courting national media coverage.
“Maybe we should have,” Riney said. “I was willing to go that route, frankly. But the committee decided to take just a small delegation to the meeting. They had met with the mayor and (City Administrator) Jason Eisenbeis, and they worked out this agreement for the site down by the Little League.”
At the June 29 meeting, Ward 1 representatives finally officially capitulated, agreeing to accept relocating Hickey White Park to the Levee Commission site, provided they are included in the planning process.
Riney remains skeptical.
“I think the city officials are going to be unpleasantly surprised when they see just how much money it will take to develop that as a park,” she said. “And I just don’t think the city will invest that kind of money down here.
“I resent that they are just throwing us a bone for the sake of appearance. It’s another empty promise. Unless they come up with something marvelous pretty soon, they will have just sold us a bill of goods. Shame on them.”
She and the other Ward 1 residents have been respectful and patient while six years have gone by, paying their taxes and watching as thousands of dollars in improvements have been made to Crystal City Park up the road. They feel unheard and their opinions undervalued. Many of them feel pressured into accepting the second-choice option, just to get a park back in their neighborhood.
I have wonderful memories of growing up in Crystal City, and I love that little town. But Riney is right. It’s time to give more than lip service to White’s legacy.
C’mon, Crystal City; keep your promise this time, and do it quickly. Hickey White Park deserves a home.
