With apologies to the master of surrealist painting, René Magritte. Source for image above, The Treachery of Images entry in Wikipedia.
In the spirit of surrealism, I offer you this post, Ceci n’est pas un parc. Which I will roughly translate as “this here isn’t a park”. And, according to a Town of Vienna official, stated clearly and unambiguously at the 4/18/2022 Town Council session, this tract I’ll be looking at, it’s not a park, it has never been a park, and those who keep calling it a park are just stirring up trouble.
Because, I repeat, the thing I am going to describe is not, and never has been a duck. I mean park. Even if, at some point, it appeared to have walked like one, quacked like one, and so on.
The subtle surrealism of the current Town of Vienna on-line Zoning Map.
Let’s start in the present, then look at some history. Right here, right now, the Town of Vienna maintains a current(-ish) on-line version of its official Zoning Map. This Map, in its official form, has significant Legal Implications for this, that, and the other. But the on-line version is just so citizens can look up the status of a piece of land.
You can find that map by clicking this link to this this Town of Vienna web page.
If you look in the northern part of town, you’d see this. The various colors represent different types of zoning in Vienna.
But there’s writing underneath the zoning layer. If you strip off the zoning layer, you’d see this:
To save you the squinting, let me blow up the relevant portion. The black annotation is mine.
How anyone could possibly have gotten the notion that the area in question was, at one time, called and considered to be a park, I cannot imagine. If you are somehow so delusional as believe what is literally written on the Town’s own on-line zoning map, just keep repeating to yourself: Ceci n’est pas un parc. Because you’ve been told that is isn’t, and never was, a park. Eventually you will believe it.
In all fairness, that’s not currently zoned as a park. But “park” zoning is a recent phenomenon in the Town of Vienna. And that’s after the Town quietly decided it wanted to use that land for another purpose.
Instead, that’s called a park — on the Town’s current map — because — see below — that’s how the Town of Vienna classified it for decades, and that’s how it was used for decades.
If you wish to verify that the Town’s map actually says this, I suggest you hop to it. This may disappear now that TOV officials are aware of it. I just couldn’t resist pointing out the irony. For as long as it lasts.
No, wait, scratch that. That’s inconvenient. Just keep repeating: Ceci n’est pas un parc.
And, also to be fair, if zoning is the sole arbiter of park status, then the W&OD Park isn’t a park, either. That’s the curved arc cutting through the middle of this view of the TOV on-line zoning map.
Apparently, once a zoning category for “park” was established (late 1990’s?), for whatever reason, the Town did not change the zoning on either of those. I’m sure there’s some reason for it, in both cases. Possibly the W&OD exists solely as an easement? Beats me. All I know is, it’s not zoned as a park.
Four decades of ancient history and the middle ages.
Before the Town adopted a separate zoning category for parks, the only way to tell that the Town considered a parcel of land to be park land was from the official Land Use Map. That dates back into ancient history. And then, at some point, in the Town of Vienna’s middle ages, that map became part of the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. Both of these have Significant Legal Implications for allowable land use in the Town of Vienna.
The oldest such map on-line on the Town of Vienna website is the 1957 Town of Vienna proposed land use map. You can find that by clicking this link for the .pdf on the Town’s website. The orientation is a bit odd, with Maple Avenue runs left-to-right in the graphic below, but you can probably recognize the shape of the-thing-that-was-never-a-park. Apparently. Despite the green color, well … the annotation says it all.
Source: Town of Vienna 1957 proposed land use map, link given above, annotation in black mine.
If we fast-forward two decades, to the 1979 Town of Vienna official land use map (available by clicking this link to the Town of Vienna website), drawn during the Town’s Crayola Period, you’ll get yet another view of that thing which, despite clearly having been lovingly hand-colored in green crayon, is not and never has been a park. Like so:
Source: TOV 1979 official land use map, link cited above, annotation in black is mine.
You’ll have to trust me that every official map between those two tells the same story. (And that I picked 1979 solely because it sorts to the top if you search for land use map on the TOV website.)
It doesn’t stop with the maps. If you look at official inventories of park land in the Town of Vienna, in their five-year Comprehensive Plans, this same thing — that never was a park — somehow manages to end up on the list of parks, a counterfeit among all the real and true parks.
To understand the truth, you just have to be able to separate the true parks from the fake parks. But that’s easy. Allow me to demonstrate.
Just to pick one, like so, yet another couple of decades later, from the 1995 Town of Vienna comprehensive plan, you can find a tabular view of that thing which never was a park. It somehow smuggled itself onto the Town’s official inventory of parks, with the word park attached to it.
Source: Town of Vienna 1995 Comprehensive Plan, annotations mine.
See? Easy-peasy. Now, that was never a park.
Conclusion
So, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? Remember, all I’m doing here is agreeing with the Official Party Line of the Town of Vienna. How anyone in the Town of Vienna could possibly have gotten the notion that this was ever a park is just beyond me. This was never a park, therefore all the people in that neighborhood who keep saying that are just a bunch of liars. Trouble-making liars, at that. Just keep repeating, Ceci n’est pas une pipe, or parc, or maybe duck, and eventually the you will able to double-think your way into total agreement with the official Town of Vienna position on this matter.
