Festival Park may be a rose among Aberdeen's sometimes-thorny downtown, but would the field, by any other name, smell as sweet?
Aberdeen city officials would like to find out. They want to give the park a better name and they are hoping city residents can help come up with one.
"We are putting a lot of time into making Festival Park somewhat of an epicenter for our city," City Manager Doug Miller told the city council at a work session Monday, noting the park is part of the city's focus on transit-oriented development downtown.
Festival Park "is not a bad name, but does Festival Park really capture what we are trying to capture with a town square, village square, town green, of some sort? It doesn't," Miller said.
Miller said he wants to see if the city can solicit ideas for some names, without committing to necessarily using any of them.
Councilwoman Sandra Landbeck said: "I love kind of the idea of the contest," to which Mayor Mike Bennett jokingly pointed out: "It was kind of your idea."
Landbeck continued: "I keep hearing the comment that we are doing a lot of good things [in the city]." She added she hopes word of the contest can be spread on social media.
"We don't have a local newspaper, people don't read the newspaper anyway; people are on Facebook," Landbeck said. "Maybe we should put something on Facebook."
Festival Park was born in 1990, when an old school athletic field across from today's City Hall was turned into a public site with a pavilion, playground and landscaping, according to the Aberdeen Board of Parks & Recreation website.
An outdoor bathroom and storage facility were added in 1998, according to the site.
The park is often used for city events, like a Farmer's Market and the Christmas Street festivities.
It has also been the site for some higher-profile occasions. This past fall for instance, the park was visited by "House of Cards" stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright.
The actors stopped by Festival Park to film a "campaign stop" for Spacey's character, Frank Underwood, in the show's Season III, for which Netflix has announced the new episodes will debut on Feb. 27.