On The Contrary:

The other day I thought I’d try something a little bit outside of the box. Now that the Five Points Art & Landscape Installation has put the final touches on the venture, I went out and asked a number of business owners I know exactly what they thought of the statue and Burbank Boulevard Beautification Project, which came in at roughly $8 million. It wasn’t very pretty.

For most people, the recently completed David Burbank statue was a joke. Opinions put it somewhere between a likeness of Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein, and the location of something specifically designed to catch your eye being at the most confusing intersection in the city was widely considered to be borderline insanity.

Noting that I had seen bicycle tracks in the grass on the hill below the statue, three people shook their heads and concluded that a fence or barrier will soon be needed after some kid goes flying across the sidewalk and out into the rushing traffic.

The limited accessibility and lack of playground equipment was also commented on. And as to the actual value of the park, perhaps one business owner with 14 years at his nearby location may have said it best with a terse, “It’s good for dogs and homeless people!”

Back on the boulevard, just about everyone was dumbfounded by the placement of the benches. There seemed to be no logical pattern at all. Obvious places such as in front of a restaurant had none, while a block away by a printing business or a dental office there were several. The worry of litter left on them and their being used for sleeping was also brought up.

One business owner with 30 years at the same address vehemently decried the waste of cutting down 150 perfectly good crepe myrtle trees and the shoddy job done on their replacements, adding that more than a couple have already fallen over. He also felt that the rose bushes and other plants had been located much too close to the curb, making it quite difficult to exit a vehicle from the passengers’ side.

The location of the planters in the street was one thing that cropped up several times — certain businesses found themselves or their delivery vehicles greatly inconvenienced by their apparent random placement. One restaurant owner said he definitely had lost customers because of it. Two people brought up the issue of emergency vehicles being hindered by the planters, especially by Fire Station 14 and near Keystone on busy school mornings.