Ursula Street Park at 21 Fitzsimons

The 21 Fitzsimons is bounded by Mountview Blvd on the south, 23rd Avenue on the north, Scranton St on the west and Uvalda St on the east.  It is bisected by 22nd Avenue running east and west and Ursula St running north and south.  This neighborhood is much smaller than the ones I usually define.  This is only a quarter-mile by a quarter-mile instead of a mile by a mile.

Why do I call this exurban, instead of suburban or even urban?  It seems urban because all the buildings are 4 stories, and it is near several 10-story hospitals. Well, look at this map that I drew on in Paint:

The area I enclosed in green is the same as that above.  The area enclosed in yellow is what I call "exurbia".  It is either a dirt parking lot, or vacant land or open space.  Much of it is covered in weeds or rocks or construction debris.  This exurban space surrounds the urban plot in the middle and really drains the life out of it.  You could lay out by the pool in the middle of one of the apartment buildings and forget about the wasteland around you, but anywhere else in this neighborhood you are very aware of it.  Maybe you could excuse it, thinking that it is "under construction".  But how long will this state of being "under construction" last?  And then you will just have to accept that the area will always look this way.

The real tragedy is that when the Army occupied this land, it had a beautiful well-maintained golf course on it.  But then the planners of the medical campus thought it would be a good idea to bulldoze the golf course and let weeds grow there.  And to let the clubhouse at the golf course decay to such an extent that it will have to be torn down, but that hasn't happened yet, so now it is blighted.

Another depressing element is the newly built apartment complex on the northeast corner of the 21 Fitzsimons neighborhood.  It is so new that it isn't on the above maps.  But it seems to be abandoned, maybe of victim of the coronavirus recession.  Maybe it is still under construction, but something about it seems mildly creepy and weird, with the many outside entrances, and the labels still on the glass.

Anyways, the point of this little blog post isn't the neighborhood or the surrounding wasteland, it is the park at the middle of it.  This park doesn't have a name, not that I can tell, so I will call it "Ursula Street Park".  On one map it shows up as "Donor Park", but I can't find that repeated anywhere else.
It is a nice enough park with a pleasant egg-shaped design, with a sidewalk around it and criss-crossing it.  You could maybe imagine an orchestra in the park, if it was bigger, and if there was a bandstand built and if coronavirus didn't exist.  But this is just a boring nice park that is the centerpiece of the neighborhood.  I would give it a B; however it has a big flaw.  The area south of Montview is covered in weeds, and that really detracts from the loveliness of the park.  So overall, I would give this a C in my ranking of exurban parks in Aurora.