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Published on 07/28/1999 All articles from this issue

Parks and Rec narrows park-name choices to 3

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

The final list is short.

The Los Altos Parks and Recreation Commission chose three names at its July 21 meeting for each of the two city parks under construction and will be sending them on to the city council for final selection.

"We thought maybe someone would come up with a real zinger," said Marge Anderson, a member of the commission and chairwoman of the subcommittee to review park name suggestions. "But it didn't happen that way. We got something very basic."

The three choices for the corner park at Edith Avenue and San Antonio Road are Village Park, Village Gateway Park and Village Corners Park.

"People ought to be very grounded in their community," Anderson said. "An ordinary park name is just fine."

For the 5-acre site the city is developing for recreation at 401 Rosita Ave., the three choices are: Rosita Park, Rosita Avenue Park and Orchard Park.

The commission received 60 nominations for park names for the Edith/San Antonio corner and 20 suggestions for 401 Rosita.

"The wonderful thing," said David Casas, a member of the parks and recreation commission who also served on the park-name subcommittee, "is the amount of input from the community. It opens up a window on what the community is thinking."

Many suggestions were the names of people. Audrey Fisher Park was a popular submission. Fisher, elected mayor of Los Altos in 1976, was the first woman to serve in that capacity. She served on the city council for 16 years. Cranston Park, to honor former U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, who is from Los Altos, was also suggested.

"We decided to steer away from that, not to single out an individual," Anderson said. "Naming a park for a person is taking a big step." And it excludes others, Anderson said.

However, had there been a benefactor who had given the land, like the Shoup family for Shoup Park on University Avenue, then the park may have been named for a person, Anderson said.

Many suggested Millennium Park. Anderson called that "trendy" and pointed out that this is 1999 and that the real millennium is not until 2000-2001.

The city council will be making the final choice, most likely at an August council meeting.

And the council "can take these names and throw them all out," Anderson said.