After outcry, Iris Chang Park won’t house well
SAN JOSE >> Following pushback from members of the community, San Jose city officials said this week that the Iris Chang Park site is no longer being considered to house a water well for a nearby Microsoft project.
“I think the council heard our community voice and they respect our feedback, so we are very, very happy,” said YingYing Chang, Iris’ mother.
Iris Chang wrote “The Rape of Nanking,” which delved into the 1937 Nanking massacre. She committed suicide in 2004 after a battle with depression.
Her parents and other members of the North San Jose community she called home have for years pushed for the creation of a park in her memory. Finally, in 2015, San Jose officials settled on a 3-acre spot not far from where the Montague Expressway connects with Interstate 880. But then the spot came under consideration to hold a groundwater well to serve a Microsoft data center to be built nearby.
Now, that idea is off the table, and construction of the park can move forward.
“Given the potential impacts to the project schedule and the feedback received by the community, staff is no longer considering this location for a well,” the city’s directors of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services; Economic Development; and Environmental Services wrote in a memo to the City Council.
The City Council is expected to approve construction plans for the park by June of this year and it should be open by mid2019.
Chang and her husband, Shau-Jin, live nearby and take a walk everyday. Right now, she said, they see an empty lot.
“It will be amazing when there’s a park with trees and places to sit,” she said. “That will be much, much better.”
It’s unclear where the well ultimately will be located. Any site will need to have good water quality, said Councilman Lan Diep, who represents the district where the park will be located.
“We heard the community. Nobody from the city ever intended or wanted the well at the park, it’s just that they had to look at every possibility,” he said. “Now we have to find an alternative site.”
In their memo, city leaders said they’d also eliminated the Agnews Park site, on Zanker Road near E. Tasman Drive, from consideration because the water quality there is not good enough. They are now looking at land the city owns and land it might acquire to hold the well, and are scheduled to report back to the City Council by mid-2018.