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HOAG'S POND
Hoag's Pond is a charming feature of the neighborhood around the Interurban Trail south of Old Fairhaven Parkway. The City once owned a lovely parcel of land, forested with mature trees with a south facing exposure, overlooking Hoag's Pond. Existing street right-of-ways guaranteed access to the property and made a connection through the property between the 28th Street corridor and the Interurban Trail. Nevertheless, the City engineered a land swap with the owner of the rest of the surrounding property. It would have traded the beautiful city parcel for a worthless strip of rough terrain on the very east edge of his property. The idea was to accomplish the very trail connection already afforded by the street right-of-ways. Unfortunately, it didn't even work. The proposed strip ended in an already vacated street right-of-way in the same ownership - necessitating a future acquisition to make the connection work. The kicker was that the beneficiary of the deal was a retiring city administrator. The insulting part was that the architects of the deal, department heads and their lieutenants, were the ONLY ONES who knew the property was already on a confidential Greenways acquisition list. The upshot was that several city employees tried to add over a million dollars to a retiring empployees property, using priviledged information. I argued to the Mayor and his deputy administrator, six months before the deal went through, that it was not in the public's interest. They agreed, but did nothing to prevent it. When it passed, I organized and qualified a referendum to challenge the enabling ordinance. Of couse, the city didn't put it on the ballot, but they did undo the deal. Enough said: You can see
a history of the deal at: There is an
annotated aerial photograph of the area available at:
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