Even though Chuck Brown had nothing to do with the Langdon/Woodridge community, the plan to reform a local park right off of RIA in his honor is moving forward. Thanks to reader, Toni, for passing this article from CityPaper along:
This morning at the Wilson Building, Mayor Vince Gray signed into legislation plans to turn a portion of Ward 5’s Langdon Park into Chuck Brown Park and finalized a memorial in honor of the late Godfather of Go-Go. But the renderings released today are dramatically different from the images we saw back in August. The latest plans for Chuck Brown Park turn the site into an outdoor concert destination: “Reminiscent of Roman structures,” the proposal says, “the venue will take the shape of an amphitheater with a semi-circular theatre space defined by rows of magnolia and cherry blossom trees.” The amphitheater, called the Chuck Brown Music Pavilion, is designed for a capacity of more than 900 seated visitors.
rhodeislandavene.com 
Maybe we can finally get some of the lighting in the park that was promised years ago.
I hope they widen 20th Street to accommodate the crowds. I would like to see a state of the art sound studio so that budding musicians can create music to go with such a grand performance venue.
The Washington Post gives more details (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2013/01/10/chuck-brown-park-will-feature-bandshell-timeline-tower/). It’s going to be a $1 million structure/renovation! RIAInsider please post the photos from WaPo. It looks like the Langdon will be significantly reconfigured.
This looks amazing! Art & Music would really revitalize this community in such a positive way. Is there a Friends of Landgon Park group so we can ensure the design/community intents get implemented?
Not that I can tell. There’s an association for the dog park, but not the park at large – at least not one that has ANY web presence. A group would be excellent, though, even necessary. One big thing will be making sure that the space is programmed, and programmed with things the community can enjoy. One thought I had for off-season use was a holiday sing-along. I always loved caroling as a kid, and, if we could find a group to come out and sing all our holiday favorites, it would be a great way to get the community out and using such a great asset off-season. Many more things could easily be thought up during the warmer months. Oooh…maybe some kind of Halloween show for the weekend of Halloween…a “monster bash?” I guess I’ve been thinking more about how to keep it used when it’s least likely to be.
Maybe people will stop using the area as an illeagal parking lot! What happens to the existing picnic structure? It doesn’t appear on the renderings despite the statements of “no change” to Langdon Park.
Is this really a way to bring life into this park? I hate to admit this, but this looks butt-ugly to me. I know parks need to be used often in order to serve communities, but does the building have to be so ugly? Is there no beautiful, classic or at least sweet-looking way to do this?