Creek loses its concrete cap

This is cool, so I'm putting it up right away, but please read my post from earlier today (it's just below) about transit myth-busting.

Little Sugar Creek is free! It's being removed from its concrete prison even now. County real estate services project manager Jay Higginbotham shot this photo today from the new bridge over Independence Boulevard.

The old concrete parking lot was built atop the creek when the former Midtown Square -- originally Charlottetown Mall -- opened in 1959, the first enclosed shopping mall in the South. Engineer Pete Verna supervised the project for developer James Rouse, who went on to national fame for such projects as the planned town of Columbia, Md., and Faneuil Hall marketplace in Boston. It was Verna, who's still doing engineering work here, who designed the concrete over the creek, he told me in an interview a few years back.

Eventually all the concrete will be removed from the creek, and the county greenway system will run beside it.