EW Letter of the Week

This letter has the classic Eugen "I don't live in the world where business have to make money" attitude working in spades.

ROOFTOP PARK

Greetings! Here's a compromise idea re: what to build across from the Eugene Public Library. A park, on the roof of a one-story building, which has street-level stores, java haunts to granola shops, facing Olive Street, 10th Avenue and Charnelton Street. The first floor interior could have an inner green-spaces courtyard and access ramps to a below ground parking garage much like the library's. The excavation work for such a garage is already half-done. (Of course, having a downtown public pool is an alternative.)

On the rooftop's park, tables and chairs surrounded by plants and small trees in raised-beds, ivy growing on 8-foot high wind-blocking wooden lattice work — all accessed during library hours and for special events.

No doubt two or three small cart vendors would love to get a contract for such a rooftop park.

So, what do you think? Is it evident to you that any urban renewal work must be environmentally responsible and contribute to lessening, not increasing, the effects of global warming?

Charles F. Thielman, Eugene