Why should New London sell any part of Riverside Park to the Coast Guard Academy?

I have yet to hear one good reason why this is a good idea.

Some have suggested it's a good idea to sell the park because the city hasn't maintained it over the years and not many people use it.

So what.

It's land and it will be there 100 years or 200 years from now, preserved as open space, available for whatever future generations choose to do with it.

Whether the picnic tables need to be painted or the bushes need to be trimmed in 2010 is irrelevant.

No matter how much it's in disrepair, it's not doing any harm.

Maybe the will to fix up the park and encourage residents to make better use of it will emerge sometime in the near future. Or maybe not.

Maybe it will take the kind of changes in the world that created a flight to the suburbs in the first place to bring people back in big numbers and to make Riverside more valuable again, changes we can't foresee right now.

Maybe the park will someday help lure people to New London, when the next energy crisis makes city life more attractive.

Some people have suggested it's a good idea to sell the park because the Coast Guard makes for good neighbors and they'll do a nice job fixing up the property.

That's true, but city residents won't be welcome there anymore, so what good will it do them? The academy's big chain-link fences with "no trespassing" signs will just move in a lot closer toward the neighbors.

Some people, including the city manager, have proposed selling roughly half the park.

I'm not quite sure of the logic of this.

City residents will be more likely to use the park if it's half the size? The city can't manage to maintain 18 acres but will do a good job with seven?

If the city manager really thinks the city can make seven acres of Riverside into a pristine, well-maintained park, then do it, and bank the rest of the land as wooded open space.

Some people have suggested it's a good idea to sell the park because it would generate some money, which could be used, say, to fix up other parks.

This is shortsighted, plain and simple. The relatively small amount of money generated from the sale would wash into the budget and disappear.

The money would soon be gone, like the park. And there would not be one dime in new tax revenue to show for the loss.

The federal government took 13 acres of the park by eminent domain, for academy expansion, in 1961 and paid $36,000. Whatever amount the park might sell for today would also seem like a ridiculously small amount 50 years from now.

The very best reason not to sell the park is that it was given in good faith by two leading citizens of New London to be used in perpetuity for city residents to have access to the water and wooded lands, for their recreation and good health.

No circumstances have changed since that generous gift was made in 1908, and if the grant had been made with legal encumbrances that required court review, certainly no judge today would approve a sale.

It would be an extraordinary act of bad faith to ignore the terms of this gift. Who would ever give the city anything again?

Another good reason not to sell Riverside Park is that public sentiment against the idea already seems quite clear.

Heated opposition to any idea of a sale is already coalescing among the people who were most angered by the city's role in destroying the Fort Trumbull neighborhood.

I'm not sure that the situations are at all analogous, but it feels that way to a lot of people, and I think a mark of the political leadership in New London right now would be to quickly steer the ship of state away from those shoals.

I agree with the city councilors who seem chagrined that anyone is even contemplating a sale to the Coast Guard or signing a letter of intent. A letter of intent is just that, intent.

Rather than enter into negotiations, the council should direct the city manager to write back to the Coast Guard and tell them thanks, but no thanks, the park is not for sale.

Councilors who choose to do otherwise do so at their own political peril.

This is the opinion of David Collins.