The pit of Pomona

A large pit on Pomona’s West Second Street downtown was dug for a condo project by Watt Development Co. early this year, and that’s as far as the project got before the housing market crashed. Some think the pit, which takes up half a square block, is an eyesore and would rather see it filled and turned into a sculpture garden.

At lunch Monday I was reading a Talk of the Town item in the Dec. 8 New Yorker about NYC’s own construction pits. Let me quote the relevant portion:

“What will become of the pits? Can we turn them into half-wild swimming holes, like the granite quarries of New England? Ring them with barbed wire and convert them into debtors’ prisons or internment camps for the culprits who structured synthetic C.D.O.s? They’d make excellent ha-has, for livery horses or livestock. Corn mazes. Extreme-cockfighting arenas. Or perhaps they could serve, over time, as urban tar pits, entrapping and preserving in garbage and white brick dust the occasional unlucky passerby for the scientific edification of future generations, if there turn out to be any. Or they could become parking lots.

“Vacant space tends to remain vacant, in anticipation of an upswing. Tax policy, inertia, and the eternal belief that things will get better (profitable) again usually trump civic dreams of pocket parks or stickball fields.”

An extreme-cockfighting arena has merit, though.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Plusone Linkedin Digg Reddit Stumbleupon Tumblr Email