Committee floats some ideas for Slack Plaza
The Charleston Daily Mail: Food vendors, live music suggested for controversial park
I think it's a great idea to have live music and food vendors in Slack Plaza, but I don't think it fixes the real problem.
We've had live music in the park for years. There is a stage in Slack Plaza during Festivall. Various groups have hosted musical acts in the Plaza for as long as I've lived downtown.
It also sounds like the suggestions being made are for the lunch/daytime crowd, which is fine. But it doesn't look at the big picture.
The problem is people who gather in the area to sell drugs, drink beer, fight and generally raise hell. One time a saw a large group of men playing dice during lunch. Another time I've seen people smoking joints in the middle of the day.
While more police during the day has stopped this time of behavior, I've still have seen people openly drinking beer out of brown paper bags in the evening. The only thing that will change the bad behavior is to put police in or near the park at all times.
Slack Plaza should not only be a welcoming place full of food vendors and live music during lunch, but a welcoming place at all times.
Adding food vendors and live music, and enhancing greenspace are ideas some members of a committee to redesign Slack Plaza will explore in the coming months.
Mayor Danny Jones formed the 11-member committee last week to deal with the controversial pedestrian thoroughfare between Summers and Laidley streets in downtown Charleston.
The plaza, which is part of a corridor between Capitol Street and Charleston Town Center, has been a problematic area for city officials.
I think it's a great idea to have live music and food vendors in Slack Plaza, but I don't think it fixes the real problem.
We've had live music in the park for years. There is a stage in Slack Plaza during Festivall. Various groups have hosted musical acts in the Plaza for as long as I've lived downtown.
It also sounds like the suggestions being made are for the lunch/daytime crowd, which is fine. But it doesn't look at the big picture.
The problem is people who gather in the area to sell drugs, drink beer, fight and generally raise hell. One time a saw a large group of men playing dice during lunch. Another time I've seen people smoking joints in the middle of the day.
While more police during the day has stopped this time of behavior, I've still have seen people openly drinking beer out of brown paper bags in the evening. The only thing that will change the bad behavior is to put police in or near the park at all times.
Slack Plaza should not only be a welcoming place full of food vendors and live music during lunch, but a welcoming place at all times.
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West Virginia, Charleston, WV
posted by oncee at 4:47 AM
3 Comments:
How about a bocce ball area? There's a cool one in the Little Italy section of Baltimore.
My 2 cents @ 2:00 a.m. :-)
Yeah.
Then the guidos can beat up the bums and dopers.
Somebody once told me that even the guy working in the bus ticket booth refused to use the rest room over there... because of the illegal behavior that was constantly going on in there. It seems to me that the police have just turned a blind eye to Slack Plaza for far too long. Hasn't anybody at City Hall read "Fixing Broken Windows"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows
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