Carl Weatherington peeled some citrus he ate leaning over a trash can in Hemming Plaza. He pulled a newspaper from another can, rubbed his hands on it, then talked to a visitor about why the park in front of Jacksonville City Hall has an image problem.
“The park is all right,” he said. “It’s the people.”
Too many regulars hang out every day, drifting between charity kitchens, the park and wherever they can crash, said Weatherington, 68.
“They don’t pay no bills. They just sleep and eat,” he said. “… They need to be told off, and so do I.”
But public reaction to the park has left downtown merchants feeling as shunned as the plaza’s permanent visitors.
“Any good public place will promote business activity. … We haven’t found that to be the case,” said Terry Lorince, executive director of the booster group Downtown Vision Inc.
Since December, the group and business owners near the brick-covered park have talked with the city and police about how to turn the park around.
Their ideas will become the core of recommendations an ad-hoc City Council committee will deliver to council President Stephen Joost next month.
“We want to make the park usable to all people,” said Councilwoman Denise Lee, who assigned a panel to seek consensus on a series of ideas.
The goal is to make the park more attractive and “eliminate some of the fights and cussing” but not to eliminate the poor, Lee said.
“No matter who you are, if you have a job or you don’t have a job, you’re welcome to use the park,” she said. “But we don’t want abuse.”
How to handle patrons who are homeless or just aimless has divided some opinions.
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