Monday, May 12, 2014

St. Augustine Children's Museum -- Pipe Dream or Nightmare on Riberia Street?

Why would anyone want to put a children's museum on top of a former landfill, barely covered with dirt, emitting methane gas?
Why would anyone want the liability?
Why would anyone want to put children in harm's way?
Methane gas is an explosion and inhalation hazard.
Locating a children's museum on top of it is asking for trouble.
FDEP guidelines won't allow building there.
FDEP is investigating the lack of ground cover, which violates permit parameters.
Why would anyone make such an unethical pitch to build a chidren's museum there?
Why join hands with SHAWN and KATHY HIESTER, whose bogus Aquarium proposal for the same site went belly up (and is under investigation by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Small Business Administration)?
Why would a children's museum have an agreement with the City that allows it to sell out to a profit-making company"
Why would a tiny group with less than $200,000 in the bank suppose they could build a lavish $6 million building on a former landfill site, and open "in 2014," as they shamelessly advertise on the Internet?
Why would anyone believe such claims from privileged characters who haven't even given City officials their resumes or curriculum vitae?
These are well-connected people who live in gated communities, who want to mess up the south end of Lincolnville, sometimes erroneously called "Riberia Pointe" (sic), an area the Spanish called Buena Esperanza in the 1600s.
Let them build their children's museum elsewhere. This area must remain a park, without buildings. "This land is your land," as Woodie Guthrie sang. Activists worked hard to spare it 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste that the City of St. Augustine wanted to dump back there. (It's now in a Nassau County Class I landfill where it lives).
Don't mess with Lincolnville.
We're not going to sell this land to anyone.
We might give it away -- to the National Park Service, as a component of St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, under National Park Service stewardship. www.staugustgreen.com

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