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.
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A journalist for more than two decades, David Allen has been writing a column for the Daily Bulletin since 1997 and blogging since 2007.He lives in Claremont.
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If not a temporary sculpture garden, then possibly a series of guerrilla art performances by local artists at the abandoned site will give the Watt Co. the publicity they deserve.
Posts like this show why THIS:
http://thefcblog.com/2008/12/10/3-reasons-journalists-arent-better-bloggers/#more-198
...doesn't apply to YOU...
I vote that it be filled with charcoal and a thousand delicious animals be slowly roasted over it. It IS a pit after all...
after which in a bold burst of barbecue-fueled reconquista 20,000 gustatorially-satiated Pomonians can march up Indian Hill to invade and conquer Claremont.
Don't tell Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders, that there is an open pit...he may want to build a stadium and move the Raiders there....remember Irwindale??