Here’s What the Southwest Portion of Hermann Park Could Look Like and Where You Can Go To Give Your Two Cents About It

Narrowing in on the corner of Fannin St. and Cambridge St. which will soon go by the name The Commons at Hermann Park, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and his associates have sketched out a few potentially transformative ideas for the area, such as the rocket-ship-shaped children’s play structure depicted at top with a mock jetway linking it to the hill on the right. And above, a handful of other new outdoor features that seem to be a hit with the faceless crowd of park-goers shown engaging with them in various forms of recreation.

To find out what real people think about the proposals, part of the 20-year Hermann Park master plan, the Hermann Park Conservancy is asking folks to weigh in on them during a public meeting to be held in the Cherie Flores Garden Pavilion at McGovern Centennial Gardens off Hermann Dr. on Thursday, February 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Speaking of pavilions, there’s one included in Van Valkenburgh’s plan, too, as a complement to the existing one off Fannin St.

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Other ideas being kicked around for this section of the park include a large lawn and an outdoor seating area that’d look something like this:

Right now, the area to be redone contains a number of intersecting paved and unpaved trails, as well as Lonnie Edwards’s bronze statue of George Hermann . . .

. . . and Sharon Engelstein’s sculptural rendering — dubbed Dilladiidae — of these perhaps less intelligent lifeforms:

Drawings: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Photos: Hermann Park Conservancy (statue of George Hermann); Heidi Vaughan (Dillidiidae)

Fannin at Cambridge St.

10 Comment

  • That area is populated right now by dicey people, so this could be an improvement.

  • So, does the plan include a fix for the massive homeless congregation in that area? Families will never use this if they don’t.

  • Was there a rocket ship playground there a decade or three ago (or am I hazily remembering another park)? The pictures look good, as long as doesn’t just become a nicer Kush Corner.

  • Yes, I remember playing in the all tube steel rocket ship as a kid in Hermann Park. I seem to remember that it stood alone in a field though. Glad to see they’re bringing back an homage to the old rocket.

    And I agree, if the homeless population continues to leave waste around the playground, no rocket will lure enough families to play there.

  • The hobos should send a delegate to the meeting. I’m sure they’ll have some design suggestions.

  • Grass.
    Trees.
    Cops on Horseback.
    Maybe improve run/walk trails. Max.
    Maybe some more simple picnic tables. Max.

    NO MORE monuments to the rich.
    Hermann is starting to get lose an identity as a park; i.e., a destination offering a pastoral, stress-lower place for recreation, exercise and enjoying nature, and is turning into a lower-cost Moody Gardens. STOP IT. No need for more “features”, salutes to foreign lands, bizarre architectural visionary “stuff”, almost ALL with big plaques, signage, blah, blah, extolling the benevolence of patrons. Always.

    Let us instead enjoy our grassy, once-quiet park. Leave open space for kids and visitors to roam. Add NATIVE plants and trees instead of yet ANOTHER man-made monument. The Conservancy seems to exist to BUILD. Stop it. Maintain it; if you need “beauty”, grow it naturally…not with architects and “artists”.
    It is built out. Instead, practice your more important role: Conserving! Conserving green, natural space.

    No complaints about a small plaque honoring a patron who DELETED impermeable surfaces from our Park and added a grove of native trees with grasslands!

    BTW, where are the visitors to PARK on this “underdeveloped” SW corner? Pouring more concrete? Uh. huh.

  • Looks a little sketchy to me.

  • Didn’t George Hermann fight for the Confederacy during the American Civil War? The name of the park, the hospital, and the square must be changed immediately!!

  • I ride my bike through that section of the park at night. I haven’t seen any homeless people. There already are run/walk trails and a pavilion. The statue of George Hermann already stands in that corner, and the sculpture that looks like Nerds candy is already there, too. There’s also already a small playground and a small water park. I think what they’ve described they’re adding is just more of the same, only a little farther south than what’s there already.

  • Yes bring back the rocket! I have an early childhood memory of a bully at the top level of the rocket stomping everyone’s fingers who tried to get up there. A true life lesson of how the world really works sadly missing from many kids’ lives these days. And get off my lawn!