“What Waynesboro needs now is a star!”
In the picture at left, we have downtown Waynesboro. Now, look beyond downtown Waynesboro at the mountain beyond. See that bare patch? That’s Waynesboro’s municipal landfill, which is like a scar on the face of the city. It’s visible from a large number of areas down below, and unfortunately is one of Waynesboro’s distinctive features. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel! According to the News Leader, Waynesboro City Council accepted a $2.6 million dollar bid to “cap, grade, and seed” this landfill. This will turn this brown scar on the mountain green, making it far less noticeable than it does now. Long-range plans are to turn the landfill into a park, referred to as “Sunset Park”. I think it’s a great idea, because based on the view of up there from below and how highly visible the current scar is, I think that this park would afford a wonderful view of Waynesboro and beyond. Additionally, it would be great to have a local equivalent of Mill Mountain Park in Roanoke, which has a view of the entire city. And Mill Mountain Park is also home to the Roanoke Star, which is one of Roanoke’s distinguishing features. And we must admit that the Roanoke Star, a neon-lighted star, is a lot more attractive than the Waynesboro Scar, a bare patch of land on a mountain caused by a landfill. The future Sunset Park is a perfect place for Waynesboro to have something similar to the Roanoke Star. I wouldn’t want Waynesboro to have an actual star on the mountain, since that’s already been done by Roanoke, and we don’t want to make something that looks like a cheap knockoff of Roanoke’s star. We need something different. So the thing to do is brainstorm a little. What is a distinctive feature of Waynesboro that we can place on the mountain in lights? Something that we can put up in the new Sunset Park, which Waynesboro residents and out-of-towners can visit to see up close, for Waynesboro residents to see at night and know that they’re home, and that will lend a warm glow over observation decks where people will stand to view the city below. I think that erecting something up on the mountain in Sunset Park would be a great new local landmark, and would be worlds better than what we’ve got up there right now…
Date posted: July 14, 2004
Notes: I left this quote up WAY longer than I had intended, in part because I intended to follow up this quote with a letter to the editor to the local newspapers and cite this article. That ended up on the to-do pile, and you know how that works out sometimes, unfortunately. Still, the idea is out there nonetheless in my own little bully pulpit, even if not in the newspaper.