Houston’s new downtown park has a name.
Houston’s showcase downtown park will be called Discovery Green, officials announced at a groundbreaking ceremony today.
The name was selected from among 6,200 entries in a public contest, said Guy Hagstette, park director for the Houston Downtown Park Conservancy.
Eh. Not particularly zippy, but not embarrassing. At least they didn’t call it Houston 1836. Nobody else seems terribly impressed, either: Katya would have chosen “The Big Howdy” (can’t say I agree with that, but I’ll stiplulate to its zippiness); Houstonist says “it sounds a lot like one of those stores that sells educational toys for kids”; Lair calls it “Mean Joe’s nerdy younger brother”; and HouStoned was pushing for it to be named after Lightnin’ Hopkins. There’s a choice I could’ve really gotten behind.
Oh, well. Like I said, boring but not embarrassing. What were you expecting?
One more thing:
The conservancy has raised most of the projected $81 million cost of the project, mostly from private sources. Parts of the park are scheduled to open next fall, with the entire park open by January 2008.
I don’t suppose it would be possible for them to loan a couple of those millions to help out this park, would it? Alas.
I know that in the UK frequently a park is called “Green” but I swear every time I hear green used as a noun, I think Soylent Green.
They had indicated that the name would be some combination of Texas explorer and magician, so I was hoping for Cabeza de Vaca Copperfield Commons.
I forget to get my submission in on time, tough. I feel it certainly would have beaten Discovery Green, which sounds more like a cross between a space shuttle and that movie where they made people into food.
Too much science fiction for a park’s name, if you ask me.
Kuff, I’ve been working for the City at the City Hall Annex (incidentally, this explains my general absence from the politics circle). From my observations today, I don’t think too many city employees were impressed with the new name for the park.
Of course, that’s an unscientific survey.