Originally Posted by
Hamtragedy
This is how riverfront property get treated around here.
I showed a couple friends this park and area, who were here for my wedding a couple months ago. First we stopped by a buddy's house on Scripps, hung out on their "beach." learned that houses there were going in the 20s, and how they walked across a dead body on Marlboro and Scripps a month before.
Then we drove to the abandoned riverside park, beyond where the trailer park used to be. As we watched a freighter go by, [[Peche Island in the background) I could not logically explain to them why this riverfront park had no swings, uncut grass, a parking lot with gigantic chuck-holes, trash everywhere, and that one remaining boarded up building. We walked over to the canal dividing where we were standing from Lakewood [[Lenox?)Park, where the grass was cut and the leaves were raked. Still, I had no logical explanation.
In any other place in the country, this is so ridiculously prime real-estate, municipal or private. Include the houses on the canals, and my visitors could not comprehend why waterfront property has next to no value, and in this particular neighborhood, little or no interest.
To exponentially raise their confusion, we drove back up Alter, hung a series of right turns and found ourselves on Essex, in GP. In a span of 2 minutes and 4-5 blocks we had seen the functioning and the dysfunctional.
It's startling to me everytime I visit my friends on the canal. To an out-of-towner, it completely defies logic. For that matter, to me, it completely defies logic.