"It was hard times, needed somethin' to ease my troubled mind"
(The Temptations)
Have you ever seen those internet slideshows with creepy images of old spooky abandoned and sad looking shopping malls? That's how I felt today as we walked the grounds of Batterson Pond Park.
It gave me such an incredible sense of sadness, more so than for anything I've ever felt in my 10 years of writing and 2,900+ blog posts as a Yelper. Batterson Park was in such sad and deplorable shape, I left feeling sad, depressed, and a little bit frightened.
It was opened in the 1920's as a summer refuge for Hartford area families to swim, hang out on the beach, have a picnic, and enjoy the outdoors. But over the decades it fell on hard times and was closed in 2015.
Our walk through today was unsettling and a bit scary. It was like walking through a deserted and haunted ghost town.
We saw half a dozen old decrepit buildings with rotted out roofs and floors. We saw one building that had been boarded up with plywood, but a big hunk of the plywood had been torn loose, making me wonder what kind of human forms had lurked or even scarier, may have been lurking inside.
I saw hundreds of picnic tables and grills in complete disarray with plants growing up through the slats and the wood disintegrating and crumbling into rotted ruins before my eyes.
I saw an old abandoned see-saw and a lifeguard platform tossed on the ground to rot and die.
I saw a big storage building torched and burned to the ground. How the roof framing still stands is a miracle.
Overgrown weeds and grass and a general state of neglect and disrepair are everywhere.
Yes, the lake in the center of the property is beautiful, but it's just a footnote to the overall boarded up and crumbling deterioration of the park.
I just did some quick research and learned that the cities of Hartford, New Britain and Farmington have a $7 million plan in place to refurbish the grounds and reopen it in mid-2023.
I pray that takes place and this horridly heartbreaking eyesore returns to its former state of glory. read more