I suspect It just sat fallow for 25 years because there was already a park nearby and nobody bothered to press them on using the land for it's donated purpose. It switched hands a few times. Likely someone turned it up in some meeting and realized at this point they were never going to do anything with it and might as well sell it.
Edit: In considering the protracted timeline, I revise the assumption to "nobody at the office knew why they had the land or any stipulations attached to it". it's even possible that the buyers in 08 didn't know the terms of the original deed from nearly a decade before. Not that it makes it right to sell it but the intent wasn't likely malicious, the land wasn't donated just last year or anything.
Calling that a park is stretching it, even if someone named it "park". That's a playground, some grass, and a parking space. Not something where you can enjoy a stroll for a couple hours.
A city of ~20k doesn't have to go crazy here, but surely you can maintain something nicer (especially once you have that data center money!)
It's a playground, some grass, a parking lot (a "parking space" is for one car), a basketball court, a baseball diamond, and what looks like a decent paved, tree-lined trail that goes all the way past the animal shelter to a neighborhood.
I recently moved from the inter-mountain West to the east and that is one thing that is fascinating to me is how differently the term park is used between the 2.
Out west a couple of swing sets and a slide with a small patch of grass is considered a park whereas out east a park is multi acre wilderness with trees streams and miles of trails.
It's just funny to me how even though it's the same country it's 2 totally different things meant by the word "park"
I don't think this is an east-coast/west-coast thing, but I think people all over the USA use the word "park" to mean anything on the scale of corner playground to national wilderness area.
As someone who lived in the West my entire life, not many people would call a couple of swing sets and a slide a park. A playground maybe, but not a park. Now I believe the city would officially call it a park, but that doesn't make it a park.
> Though that donation itself is a bit weird because literally on the just the other side of the neighborhood is. a park!
To be fair, parks don't just mean playground equipment. It could be a forested area with trails. It could be a drainage pond you can fish in. It could be a garden or prairie. It could even just be a big grass lot where people can play games and do whatever.
It's crazy how people in this thread wanted to physically cause harm to this city's councilmen when it does seem pretty believable that "nobody at the office knew why they had the land or any stipulations attached to it" when someone takes a second to look into it
@dang what kind of site are you trying to run here?
I measured it out. I think it's the bulk of red, possibly ending at the dashed lines at the right-top. That area going all the way down including the housing development and cutting out both of the substations is 87 acres.
Each of the three marked buildings (assuming the two grey and three white rectangles make up a single building) is 135,000 square feet.
If the only interesting thing about a work is it's provenance is that work actually valuable?
actually in all honesty human works are predominantly crap, and a bit passé. If I'm going to visit a site whose whole shtick is provenance I'd rather see some really, objectively good, ai stuff. that would be way more interesting.
> The executive branch cannot just legally not spend that money.
Time and time again this proves to be rather irrelevant to this administration. There's literally no consequences for illegal actions and even if they're called out on it all that is reactionary. The system will be well broken before a ruling.
Kicking myself for not getting the other 2 sticks when I built my computer. I didn't really need them and had them in the cart, just never pulled the trigger.
Now they're worth over half as much as the whole machine.
Yep, this is the same thing they did with the video streaming.
The video thing actually made me cancel prime. The shipping isn't a big deal anymore and I was able to justify the prime as a bonus to the streaming service.
I just want shipping-only again, like it originally was. I never wanted any of the extra slop on the side, and I lost the main benefit I needed of fast shipping.
Now even "prime" shipping is a weeks' promise out to deliver, but boy will they not stop slamming Prime Video and all this extra crap down my throat to try to make it sound like it's such a great value I didn't ask for. (Also: the nerve of the letters in the mail to remind me I haven't opened any of Prime Video?)
I've only placed ~2 orders in all of 2026 so far on Amazon because of the slow shipping garbage, and it took me forever to finally give in and buy it there because every time I sourced elsewhere (like eBay, for small goods like electronics adapters etc) I'd end up with an even slower Amazon dropship to my door.
“Listen,” said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure, “they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.”
“GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?”
“Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.”
A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.
“What?” they said.
“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.”
As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it said.
Good bit of survivor bias in the retired population. If you can put in 30-40 years of full time work and then afford to retire you probably don't have a propensity for substance abuse.
Setting aside whether I think data centers or good or bad and just focusing on the sale of the land (for whatever purpose).
The land was donated back in 99 and looks like they never followed through on making it anything. Which is pretty shitty to Mr Bland's vision.
Though that donation itself is a bit weird because literally on the just the other side of the neighborhood is. a park!
https://maps.app.goo.gl/jwcANZ59bW17sTmm7
according to the town site the park was dedicated in 1955 https://www.taylortx.gov/244/Fannie-Robinson-Park
I suspect It just sat fallow for 25 years because there was already a park nearby and nobody bothered to press them on using the land for it's donated purpose. It switched hands a few times. Likely someone turned it up in some meeting and realized at this point they were never going to do anything with it and might as well sell it.
Edit: In considering the protracted timeline, I revise the assumption to "nobody at the office knew why they had the land or any stipulations attached to it". it's even possible that the buyers in 08 didn't know the terms of the original deed from nearly a decade before. Not that it makes it right to sell it but the intent wasn't likely malicious, the land wasn't donated just last year or anything.
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