The ‘symbolic ownership’ brought by condos will destroy DIX Park

Will Hooker says this about himself: I was raised near Lake Ontario in NY, obtained an undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the SUNY College of Forestry at Syracuse University in 1967, and a Master’s degree from NC State University in 1979. In the years between the two, I traveled our continent and Europe on my thumb as a flower child, and practiced landscape architecture in Raleigh, Durham, and San Francisco. From 1979 until 2013, I taught small-scale  garden design in the Department of Horticulture at NC State. On a sabbatical study leave in 1988 while bicycling across the U.S., I became upset by the lack of people out caring for the land and wondered if there might be a better way for humans to relate to the Earth. I searched for and found a message about living in a more sustainable manner, a method called permaculture. I am now certified as both a designer and a teacher by the  Permaculture Institute of North America.

Will spoke to City Council on October 14, 2025:  

Good evening. My name is Will Hooker.

I am a landscape architect and an emeritus professor from NC State University where I taught landscape design for over 35 years. I have practiced in the Triangle, across the state, West Virginia, and California. I have designed a number of parks in all of these places.

I want to bring up a proposal that is circulating concerning Dix Park. There is a movement advocated by some rich and powerful people which is very ill-advised, very short sighted, and would represent an extremely bad precedent for the future of Dix Park. Some people want to put condominiums in Dix Park.

Central Park in New York City, the best urban park in the U.S. and one of the best in the entire world, is a model for what Dix Park could become. Central Park was started in the 1850s, and since its inception has continuously had pressure exerted on it to convert portions of it to more commercialization. Thankfully this has been thwarted, allowing Central Park to be what it was intended to be, a place to offer “… a retreat from noise, pollution, and overcrowding.” That is also what Dix Park should be.

And with Raleigh’s population continuing to explode, being one of the fastest growing cities in the country, every square foot of land devoted to trees, meadows, and open space, will be ever more precious.

The argument for condominiums seems to be that we need to create revenue-generating means in the park in order to afford its completion. After 165 years Central Park is still being tweaked. We should be in no overly  artificial rush to do so here – we should be building our park as we can afford it.

As it is now, with very few amenities completed, it is still a rousing success. It is the relief from urban crowding that makes it so, and we should do all that can to preserve that relief.

Are there revenue generating enterprises that are appropriate for Dix Park? I’m sure that there are some, but they will never bring in huge revenues, and will not cover the costs of maintaining the park.

These could be places like a restaurant and/or snack bar, or perhaps a bicycle/scooter rental facility. These support the visits of the citizens coming to enjoy the park. If we are to have a great urban park, we must acknowledge our need to finance its operation, including its maintenance and its continual evolution and building.

But I hear that the expense of maintaining Dix Park is overwhelming.

A good deal of those current costs are for maintaining the existing buildings. They are old, not aesthetically pleasing, and not suitable given today’s environmental demands for sustainability.

There’s a simple solution to that problem – get rid of them. Tear them down.

In spite of the specious arguments of the preservationists, most of the old buildings are not pleasing, and should not be part of our efforts to create an aesthetically beautiful and well-functioning urban park.

And finally, while studying landscape architecture, I learned about the concept of ‘symbolic ownership.’

This is the reality of people feeling that they own something even if in fact they are typically only located nearby.

This is certainly what will happen if folks are able to purchase condominiums in Dix Park. They will ‘symbolically own’ a portion of the park and will be offended when normal citizens, who just want to enjoy the open space, invade ‘their’ park.

This would be a major travesty, and would make the park unattractive for all of us normal folks.

Please, please! do not allow condominiums to be built in our park.

Thank you very much.

If you appreciate the kind of reporting we bring to you