Thursday, May 1, 2008

USA Today: Push for urban parkland takes root

Despite the housing and credit crunch, there has been a boom in one sector of urban real estate - parkland.

In the April 13 edition of USA Today, Haya El Nasser documents some of the massive urban parks projects going on throughout the United States.

A growing awareness of health and environmental issues is largely at the center of the decision to create such large urban green spaces, but there have to be other reasons why it has become so popular.

That reason is money - parks have a tendency to generate real estate development around their edges, and properties with access to nearby parkland tend to hold their value much better than those without.

Is it possible that the reclamation of the 1,050-acre Fernald "Superfund" site into a new park made the $200 million, 950-home Fort Scott residential project possible?

1 comments:

CityKin said...

Yes the cleanup at Fernald and it's conversion to park definitely made the Fort Scott project possible. Fort Scott itself was closed partially because of parents worries about contamination. Also the development does not have sewers, and had to build its own treatment plant. Another thing that spurred that development was the new bridge over the Great Miami, that basically extends Blue Rock straight from I74 to their development.

Good public parks definitely enhance property values. This is the whole argument in Pendelton around the SCPA. They want the greenspace that the school board owns to convert to a public park.

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