Donation Finances Improvements at Memorial Park

New plants now adorn the south entrance to the rose garden at Memorial Park in Omaha.

Omaha Parks and Recreation Department "removed some huge, overgrown Juniper shrubs last year that were declining," said Patrice Slaven, a parks planner. "There was a desire to create a formal entry planting to the rose garden."

"Dr. John Sage, an avid supporter and volunteer at the rose garden over the years, donated over $40,000 to do the plantings and other landscape improvements" on the south side of the main Monument, Slaven said.

The species planted were the Taylor Juniper, Little Devil Ninebark, Everlow Yew, Pink Princess Crabapple and White Pine, Slaven said.

"The project provides an attractive entrance to the garden, which is the location of many weddings," Slaven said. "The regularly spaced junipers, when fully grown, will provide a dramatic entrance to reinforce the formality of the rose garden layout."

The park improvement project occurred in the last week of May, Slaven said.

A portion of the new plants at Memorial Park. Photo taken July 31, 2015.

Informational Meeting Held at Spring Lake Park

With completion in sight, neighborhood residents and others are looking forward to a community setting of park green spaces, improved public access, woodland, wetlands and especially a new 1.5 acre pond at Spring Lake Park in south Omaha.

"This effort is a monument to the people that have worked on this project through the years," said Janet Bonet, president of the Spring Lake Neighborhood Association. She noted that initial efforts began in the 1980s, and that many people involved during those first years are no longer alive. The park will be a place for new generations, she said.

Work on CSO! project features will begin within Spring Lake Park in the next week or two. The biggest project will be excavation of about 25,000 cubic yards of dirt to create the pond, which will be 15-20 deep and stocked for fishing. A 21-vehicle parking lot with a bioretention garden will be placed west of the north end of the pond. The old combined line through the lowland north of F Street will either be removed or suitably abandoned.

Work is already underway on provided the drainage tube under F Street for the pond. Progress of the boring has been hindered some by a historically constructed structure which was buried within the embankment.

Other attendees asked questions and made suggestions. One idea was to get project participants to cooperate on a "final cleanup" to remove all the tires and trash before the park reopens, following the completion of the current construction phase.

Once the public can reuse the park, we "need to have a community effort to keep trash and tires out," Bonet said, and "build ownership of being good stewards of the park and its neighbor."

Soon, the Omaha Parks and Recreation Department and the project construction company will be posting regulatory signs to indicate it is illegal to enter portions of the park where work is underway. Rather than closing the entire park, a suggestion was made to mark only particular areas (i.e., with something like "Construction Area - Keep Out" rather than the more exclusive "Park Closed" signage as was mentioned by officials), so other sections of the park can continue to be visited. The second option was affirmed by members of the audience.

Officials associated with the project provided these details and others - including an update on street closures including the status of now closed southern extent of Spring Lake Drive - at an informational meeting at the clubhouse of the park golf course on Saturday morning, March 28th. Besides about twenty community members, also present were representatives from the community outreach organization, the contractor Roloff Construction, the project design company (HDR) and Omaha Public Works. Following the inside gathering, about a dozen people took advantage of an outside view of the project from F Street, south of where the pond will be built.

Work is beginning in the park since sanitary line construction has been mostly completed in the adjacent neighborhoods, construction officials said. This work included the construction of five below-street features that will capture grit, trash and other debris from the streets, before it can wash into the park. These containment structures will be periodically cleared out by Public Works.

As part of the project, about 4300 pounds of illegally discarded tires were hauled away within the past couple of weeks, after having been gathered during the previous months. Several other sites which have been long-term piles of discarded material on private property at the park's western fringe have also been cleaned up.

A bid for the initial landscaping efforts is expected to be selected in later April by the city of Omaha. Plans are to plant a variety of trees, perennials and ground cover, and wetland plants at outlying parks and a southern portion of Spring Lake Park. The majority of plantings within the park will occur in 2016.

Construction of this Phase One portion of the CSO! project will be completed by autumn 2015, or early in 2016. Phase Two is expected to then begin in 2018, with an initial public meeting in the autumn of 2015.

Tree Plantings 2015

These are the deciduous (14 species), understory (four species) and coniferous (four species) trees to be planted in 2015, according to the preliminary plan issued by Public Works:

• Spring Lake Drive in the southern extent of Spring Lake Park (34 deciduous trees): northern red oak, American sentry linden, shingle oak, accolade elm, prairie pride hackberry, triumph elm, bur oak, kentucky coffeetree and thornless honeylocust
• Twenty-third Street and Interstate 80 right-of-way (seven trees): northern red oak, bur oak, chinkapin oak and black hills spruce
• J Street and 12th Street (one tree): bur oak
• Missouri Avenue to Gibson Road (53 trees and 32 understory on the east side of 13th Street): swamp white oak, northern red oak, tulip tree, American sentry linden, shademaster honey locust, chinkapin oak, triumph elm, shingle oak, eastern redbud, autumn brilliance serviceberry
• Rudy Novacek Memorial Garden (five deciduous trees and six understory trees): triumph elm, goldenrain tree, Japanese tree lilac, autumn brilliance serviceberry
• Bob Campos Soccer Complex at 33rd and Q Street (17 coniferous and deciduous trees and eleven understory trees): bur oak, tuliptree, accolade elm, black hills spruce, autumn brilliance serviceberry, eastern redbud
• James F. Lynch Park at 21st and Martha Street (53 deciduous and coniferous trees and six understory trees): northern catalpa, swamp white oak, tulip tree, northern red oak, prairie titan kentucky coffeetree, American sentry linden, shademaster honeylocust, concolor fir, norway spruce, douglas fir, black hills spruce, eastern redbud, autumn brilliance serviceberry, Japanese tree lilac
• Spring Lake Park golf course (31 total trees): shademaster honeylocust, tulip tree, American sycamore (five), American sentry linden, norway spruce, concolor fir, black hills spruce (four), autumn brilliance serviceberry and eastern redbud

Bird Variety

There were sixteen species of birds noted during a pre-meeting jaunt among the north F Street portion of the park. Most notable were the many male Northern Cardinals - vivid in their bright red plumage - and a single Brown Creeper and the vibrant song of a Carolina Wren.

Omaha's Zesto Building Conveys Design Problems and Causes

The relatively recently built Zesto building in North Downtown is gaining prominence for its significance associated with bird-window strikes.

The weekend of October 12-13 was especially revealing. Primarily the east facade — but newly realized for the north facade — the structure had at least seven window strikes on Saturday (four) and Sunday (three). There were certainly other strikes. Rainy weather on the morning of October 14th, limited survey efforts due to the wet conditions for a route which is usually traversed via a bicycle.

Birds were obviously active in the landscaping associated with the west parking lot of the CenturyLink Center, and on the north side of TDAmeritrade Park. They could be seen flying among the trees and ground vegetation, early in the morning.

A portion of the northern treescape at the west parking lot of the CenturyLink Center, with the Zesto building in the background.

Tree and ground vegetation on the south side of TDAmeritrade Park, which is directly north of the Zesto Building, on 12th Street.

Some of them hit the outer glass of the three businesses at this location: Zesto (at the south end of the building, and which is currently closed for the season), Blatts Beer and Table, and Lids Locker Room.

Most of the strikes occurred because of the glass exterior of Lids Locker Room, which is deadly to migratory birds.

Within a few days of mid-October, at least a dozen strikes occurred, as shown by the available records, derived from site visits on each day indicated from October 5th to October 13th. Weather during the most recent weekend was especially hazardous, as clear skies, slight winds and dearth of storms meant that many birds moved south in association with their autumnal migration.

• 278: 3
• 279: 1
• 281: 1
• 285: 4
• 286 (October 13th): 3

During the Saturday visit, while appropriately dealing with the triage of the birds already dead or injured on the sidewalk along the east side of the building, another bird bounced off the glass and, thankfully, was able to continue its flight onward back to the trees at the CenturyLink parking lot.

Once notes were written, the mornings' route continued on both Saturday and Sunday. There may have been other disabling strikes that happened, but there were other hazardous buildings to survey in downtown Omaha, along the riverfront and bluffs of the great migratory flightway associated with the Missouri River.

The species noted during 2013 at the Zesto building have, thus far, been the: Orange-crowned Warbler (one which was moved away from the sidewalk to beneath a tree and upon the few square feet of mulch, so it could die on a natural surface); Yellow-rumped Warbler (one), Mourning Warbler (one), Common Yellowthroat (five, which have mostly been female birds), Clay-colored Sparrow (three); Lincoln's Sparrow (seven, including some which hit the glass and suffer for quite a time upon the sidewalk as they recover); White-throated Sparrow (one); and, Dark-eyed Junco (one).

Pictures showing bird strike victims and the setting at the Zesto Building in North Downtown.

There was only one window-strike noted at this building during the autumn of 2012, in September. Six strikes are known to have occurred in May 2013. Add in an additional occurrence on September 11, 2013 to indicate the tally of suffering wrought by the architectural features of this place.

Dangerous Architecture by Design

Owners of the Zesto building are probably not aware of how dangerous their building is for appreciated migratory birds. Nothing has been done to address this intentionally built structure, which can now be known for its well recognized facet of causing bird deaths, as well as for other lesser features.

The obvious threats associated with this building were originally conveyed to its architect's before the plans began to become a structure. Some of the first strikes were indicated to the agency, so they are aware of the results.

Several obvious changes wrought the demise of so many birds in North Downtown. They include:

1. Clearing of the historic setting for urban redevelopment which has changed the urban habitat;
2. Requirements by planning officials of the City of Omaha which require landscaping features, as supported by advocacy groups such as Omaha by Design, for example;
3. Building architecture which include prominent glass facades, instead of the more "passive" wall features, such as brick, used for historic construction;
4. Failure of building architects to actively consider bird-safe designs;
5. Construction of numerous buildings with associated plantings which attract birds to a hazardous environment;
6. Failure of building owners to suitably address problems at places where bird strikes occur and have been repeatedly documented;
7. Failure of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, wherein every bird strike is considered a taking of a protected species; and
8. An obvious lack of intention in multiple instances by building owners to show any concern for conservation of wildbirds associated with the Missouri River valley. This is especially the case at the CenturyLink Center and TdAmeritrade Park managed by the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority, at the 1200 Landmark Center, the Curtis Federal Building which has offices of the United States National Park Service, the Gottschalk Freedom Center associated with the Omaha World-Herald, Central Park Plaza, actions by the an unctuous official associated with the First National Bank tower, Union Pacific Center which is the home to a company which has millions of dollars in profit throughout the year and would would seem to be sufficient to provide funds to establish a bird-safe building, Holland Performing Arts Center, Zorinsky Federal Building which has federal offices and whose building management ignore the mandate of a "sister" agency of the United States of America government, Omaha-Douglas Civic Center, Law Building, etc.

Steps can be taken to reduce the incessant and illegal "taking" of wildbirds. There are a multitude of options, obvious to any knowledgeable and tendentious observer. This includes especially blinds which would be relatively inexpensive and not mar the static display of merchandise which no one might look at during the overnight and early morning hours.

Wildbirds are dying and suffering for unnecessary reasons in north downtown, and well as in the greater downtown area! Every building owner where they occur is responsible!

Parks Being Dramatically Altered by Stormwater Projects

Planning that will dramatically change the green spaces of Fontenelle Park, Spring Lake Park and Levi Carter Park is currently underway and was recently completed at Adams Park. Each space is to be modified for community usage or to address sanitary/stormwater discharge requirements.

During the planning process, designs have been typically derived from a common theme: provide additional recreational opportunities and utilize socalled green solutions to reduce stormwater runoff.

Staid designs are often the result, based upon a personal review of park plans and after hearing comments by residents at two recent park planning meetings.

For recreation, it is a matter or using the available landscape to provide options which will increase park usage. Place soccer fields where there is an expanse of flat ground. Add a disc golf course wherever it can fit. Place a dog run area at another place in the park where parking can be readily provided. Put in a recreational trail that follows a circuitous route around the site. Etc.

CSO! options are a regular mantra of adding features that will reduce stormwater runoff during peak precipitation events, and do something to improve water quality. The options repeatedly given are wet and dry detention basins, wetlands, and bioretention gardens. Visibly, an example will soon be presented at the east side of Elmwood Park - along 60th Street - as construction is currently underway at the site.

Landscape and Nature

East Omaha parks landscapes are the result of numerous and repeated impositions during decades of their history, and as currently underway. The changes are quite dramatic.

At Carter Lake, the former oxbow lake will soon be "industrialized" using a massive tonnage of rock riprap, to establish a place to fish regardless of impacts upon other oxbow features, with a slight nod to improving water quality. The master plan then calls for additional changes that will simplify the lake environs. There is no apparent recognition being given to the original character and history of the lake, nor a sense of design other than shoving in whatever feature park visitors might want.

At Spring Lake Park - a site which when purchased did not include a natural lake - plan participants want to put the lake back into Spring Lake Park, ignoring where the lake water originated. The springs provided the water, and land developers decided a lake would be preferable so the flows were dammed. There is nothing in the proposed designs for the park - presented November 15 - to reflect the importance of the flowing springs which are the most unique and important resources of the park environs.

For Fontenelle Park, there is the potential to devise a plan which will reflect its original character - a prairie and trees as land was first being purchased in the mid-1890s - and convey a sense of what park designed H.W.S. Cleveland envisioned. Meetings during the coming months will determine the outcome.

These plans are often based upon an lack of a thorough understanding of the prominent features of the land, its history, intent of original area designs, aesthetics, opportunities at adjacent properties and an incomplete understanding of what the community would prefer.

Nature is an essential part of urban Omaha. Green spaces are a priceless asset for residents, and this value is derived from the simplistic yet unsurpassed presentation of trees and water and open spaces free of the constructs. Soccer fields impose their simplistic view. Massive amounts of riprap do not provide a green perspective. Mown grass is simplistic and unimaginative. Concrete does nothing to add color and variety.

As Omaha parks are being modified, the always dynamic essentials of nature should be foremost in the perspective of planners and reflect an understanding of current, exciting methods of landscape architecture. Without this consideration the city will be a lesser place, dreary to those preferring a vibrant and exciting experience outdoors. Something to enjoy, remember and share.

Planning Elements Essential for Urban Omaha Parkland

Planning efforts for local parks convey an essential need to have a new understanding of some basic tenets of landscape and how it is presented.

Two recently published books convey these essentials. Both should be read thoroughly by the people responsible for designing new landscapes for eastern Omaha parks.

Public Parks, The Key to Livable Communities - issued in 2011 under the authorship of Alexander Garvin - has a broad perspective starting with history of the first parklands in the United States, which date to 1573 at St. Augustine, Florida. The wide-spread establishment of parks throughout the states often included features similar to parks created in Europe during the 1840s.

The subsequent eleven chapters provide an important perspective about parklands, with key topics discussed in the different chapters, which include:

• Key roles
• Design influences
• Parks as evolving artifacts
• Stewardship
• Finance and governance
• The role of the public; and
• Sustainability: the key to success

Each chapter presents examples of how the particular topic was successfully applied to different parks. Many of the parks discussed are in New York City, the homebase of the author, with particular attention given to Central Park.

For this preeminent urban park, the author explains that "the landscape itself is the destination" with the variety of features providing different uses to the community. This element "is dependent on people's continuing ability to get to and enjoy those destinations without interfering with everybody else in the park. It begins at the dividing line between the park and the surrounding city." Entry points are defined. Streets are covered with a canopy of trees. Waterways and vegetation are obviously essential in the success of the park layout. Noise from roadways is masked. Since the designers considered the many influences on the park space, and they were appropriately considered, the park is a success as shown by the many people that visit the space to partake in their own particular activity.

Aesthetic sustainability was shown to be essential, and takes advantage of the changing vistas of the seasons.

The grand design for Central Park was noted as being successful due to the efforts of not only the park designers, but also the many others involved every since the park was created.

Author Garvin states: "public parks are not finished works of art when they are opened to the public. They are the evolving product of a living natural landscape and its interactions with the generations of people who use them."

Prominent park designers considered in the text are Frederick Law Olmstead - to whom the book is dedicated - and H.W.S. Cleveland, who had an essential role in the development of some of the first parks in Omaha and its interconnecting boulevard system, though this aspect of his career is not discussed.

A Landscape Manifesto

This book is a visual treat which has a primary goal to redefine the role of landscape in the urban environment. Author Diana Balmori indicates two "major new tasks" that can be accomplished:

1) "landscape can now create a new kind of livable city"; and

2) "through design it can broker the coexistence of human beings with the rest of nature."

These two tenets are given in the books prelude, and the remainder of the pages present examples using concepts and illustrations derived from actual or potential projects, worldwide.

"Critical shifts" are needed to achieve these tasks, the author indicates. New visions are essential.

The concepts given in this lavish book present a cosmopolitan perspective for landscape in a built environment. Any reader will get a new awareness of what is actually involved in maintaining 31 million acres of lawn in the U.S.A., and the environmental cost!

There are many clever and unique design tidbits presented. There are so many options other than concrete and tons of riprap.

None of the designs shown in this book included riprap.

Use of this artificial material seems to be integral at Omaha to complete a task when a preferable option more integral to a green space, is not considered or used. Projects at Carter Lake and along Happy Hollow Creek will be prominent in their use of these big rocks. There are no aesthetic benefits to using large masses of rock. Neither do they provide a natural setting inviting to people of the community or migratory birds.

There were many tons of rock placed at the concrete structure where the stormwater project east of Elmwood Park, empties into Wood Creek within the park environs. During a visit on November 18th, the base of this megolith was filled with a whitish colored liquid.

The following items are from A Landscape Manifesto as presented by Diana Balmori, in her wonderful book:

"1. Nostalgia for the past and utopian dreams for the future prevent us from looking at our present.

"2. Nature is the flow of change within which humans exist. Evolution is its history. Ecology is our understanding of its present phase.

"3. All things in nature are constantly changing. Landscape artists need to design to allow for change, while seeking a new course that enhances the coexistence of humans and the rest of nature.

"4. Landscape forms encapsulate unseen assumptions. To expose them is to enter the economic and aesthetic struggles of our times.

"5. Historical precedents do not support the common prejudice that human intervention is always harmful to the rest of nature.

"6. Shifts are taking place before our eyes. Landscape artists and architects need to give them a name and make them visible. Aesthetic expertise is needed to enable the transforming relations between humans and the rest of nature to break through into public spaces.

"7. High visibility, multiple alliances, and public support are critical to new landscape genres that portray our present.

"8. Landscape - through new landscape elements - enters the city and modifies our way of being in it.

"9. New landscape elements can become niches for species forced out of their original environment.

"10. The new view of plants as groups of interrelated species modifying each other, rather than as separate and fixed, exemplifies fluidity - a main motif of landscape form.

"11. Nostalgic images of nature are readily accepted, but they are like stage scenery for the wrong play.

"12. In his History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1780), Horace Walpole writes that William Kent 'was the first to leap the fence and show that the whole of nature was a garden.' Today landscape has leapt the fence in the opposite direction, to the city, making it a part of nature.

"13. Existing urban spaces can be rescued from their current damaging interaction with nature.

"14. Landscape artists can reveal the forces of nature underlying cities, creating a new urban identity from them.

"15. Landscape can create meeting places where people can delight in unexpected forms and spaces, inventing why and how they are to be appreciated.

"16. Landscape, like a moment, never happens twice. This lack of fixity is landscape's asset.

"17. We can heighten the desire for new interactions between humans and nature where it is least expected: in derelict spaces.

"18. Emerging landscapes are becoming brand-new actors on the political stage.

"19. Landscape renders the city as constantly evolving in response to climate, geography, and history.

"20. Landscape can show artistic intention without imposing a predetermined meaning.

"21. Landscape can bridge the line between ourselves and other parts of nature - between ourselves and a river.

"22. Landscape is becoming the main actor of the urban stage, not just a destination.

"23. The edge between architecture and landscape can be porous.

"24. Landscape can be like poetry, highly suggestive and open to multiple interpretations.

"25. We must put the twenty-first century city in nature rather than put nature in the city. To put a city in nature will mean using engineered systems that function as those in nature and deriving form from them."

This summary conveys a nuance to consider once and then again and again. The particulars associated with each item provide the basis for a contemporary attitude towards nature in the city. Chapters in the book provide a foundation for further understanding each item.

These tenets should be recognized and understood as essential aspects in devising plans for urban parkland in Omaha. To do otherwise, would be a mistake of ignorance.

Omaha Officials Inconsiderate of Trees

The following pictures indicate how city of Omaha officials consider trees. In both cases, the trees did not receive any consideration, but action was taken to where they were either removed or the setting ruined.

At Hummel Park, work continues to install a frisbee golf course. There is little consideration being given to the current forest setting. Further changes which can be expected will be planting of some other sorts of vegetation at the tee boxes and along the fairway to replace the natural condition of the forest floor. Trash cans will be placed along the trail, as apparently frisbee golf course players are too lazy to hold onto their trash and take it with them.

There will be large concrete pads installed to serve as the tee spots. They will not be minimal by using mulch or something more compatible with the woodland setting, but will be large in order to meet some criteria needed for the course to meet course guidelines so this "new course" can be a sanctioned course.

According to the people doing the work, it is being done in a manner that "will enhance the environment." One of the guys said that it would either be a frisbee golf course or dead bodies. And: the situation "has to get worse before it can get better." They also mentioned they would like to build a mountain bike course in the park.

Their comments are inane as they blindly continue to ruin what Omaha Parks and Recreation officials have called a "jewel of the park system."

It certainly is fast losing any rational for this recognition based on activities in the northern park of the area.

Would the mountain bike route use the southern extent of the park so the entire area is subject to ruination and intrusive uses which are ruining the flora and increasing the disturbance to an extent to drive away wild birds?

The following pictures were taken on May 7, 2011 at Hummel Park.

Note how the deadfall wood - a natural part of any forest - has been artificially piled and the extent of the vegetative clearing; and the bare condition of the soil. Nearby there was trash lying about, and an errant piece of plywood.

Note the cleared and mown "fairway" northward from the container.

These four trees were cutdown the morning of May 9, 2011 at the south plaza of the Omaha/Douglas Civic Center. Apparently this is some sort of repair work to be done and the tress must have been in the way. Obviously they were planted to provide some landscaping, but when work needs to be done, the decision was made to just cut them done.

UNL Landscape Services to Implement Policy to Avoid Disturbing Bird Nests

By James Ed. Ducey

Landscape Services at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will be adding a new section to their policy to avoid impacts to nests of breeding birds.

"We are adding to our pruning policy a section stating that active nests will not be removed or disturbed when working on tree and shrubs," said Jeff Culbertson, East Campus landscape manager. "I brought this issue to the attention of our management staff and Director Eileen Bergt, and we agreed to add the new section."

The topic was discussed after concern for possible bird nests in tree branches being removed on East Campus was brought to their attention by a local birder.

"The section will state that active nests will not be removed or disturbed when working on tree and shrubs," Culbertson said. He was to discuss the issue with East Campus staff, and the City Campus manager is also going to discuss the policy with staff on that campus.

Landscape services expects to take a reasonable approach upon finding a nest in a tree, said Culbertson. "Since much of our pruning can be delayed, the approach we will take is to wait until the nest is no longer active. There are however, the rare occasions that a tree must be pruned or removed due to it becoming a hazardous tree. If a tree may fail unpredictably and can cause harm to students, visitors or staff, we would have to do our work to make the situation safe again.”

Landscape staff may also consider relocating the nest to a neighboring tree if that would be a sensible solution, he added.

After discussing the July 15 end date for protection of bird nests and eggs as designated in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with Ron Johnson, extension wildlife biologist, they determined that local birds may still be nesting after that date, so the new policy will not include an "all clear date."

Landscape services had previously scanned trees and shrubs before doing pruning work, but the new policy will help ensure that bird's nests will not be inadvertently destroyed.

- - - - -

Lincoln Forestry Efforts Protects Nesting Birds

The forestry department for the city of Lincoln also has a policy regarding bird nests in trees, according to information received from Terry Genrich, natural resources manager with Lincoln Parks and Recreation.

“All trees are inspected for bird nests prior to being trimmed or removed. If it is found that there is a nest in the tree and it is being used, then the tree is not trimmed until a later date after all of the young have left. If the tree involves a removal, a decision is made as to whether the tree can remain until after the young leave the nest or if there is a hazard to the public which creates a liability. In that case, the department makes a decision as to what is required to reduce or eliminate the hazard.” July 19, 2007.