Posts about Playgrounds

Here is the full spreadsheet of data (XLS). We mainly lose points on average park size, where our median of 0.7 acres is the smallest among the cities due to the many small federal circles, squares and triangles. 96% of residents live within ½ mile of at least one park, putting DC near the top on that metric, but for many that park is just a small federal square or triangle without many amenities.

DC also ranks low in playgrounds, with only 1.68 per 10,000 residents, which comes out to about 100 playgrounds. Downtown residents have been asking for a playground, and other neighborhoods could benefit from them as well.

Meanwhile, we score near the top on the other metrics. 19.1% of DC's land area is parkland, second only to San Diego and New York. This ranking unfortunately includes things like parkways and, in DC, the parking lots around RFK stadium. But that still doesn't diminish our robust amount of actual parkland, most in the large federal spaces like the Mall, Rock Creek, the Arboretum, the Anacostia and Potomac waterfronts, the Fort Circle, and more.

DC spends and the federal government spend $303.45 per capita on parks, the most of any city thanks to the Mall's role as a major national tourist destination.

In the press release, Peter Harnik, director of The Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park Excellence, notes that residents in Wards 1 and 5 especially need better park access, and there are not enough sports playing fields.

In addition, parents pushing for a children's playground downtown are a lot closer to getting their wish. The new budget allocates $500,000 to plan and build a playground, which should be enough to get it built. The National Park Service still has to select a site and give DC jurisdiction to build the playground.

For many years, few to no people lived downtown, so DC's many downtown parks only served office workers eating lunch, the homeless, and otherwise little more than decorative backgrounds to drivers on major thoroughfares. Now, more people want to use the parks at all times of the day.

NCPC just released a a video about an effort by federal and DC agencies to renovate Edmund Burke Park, where 10th and L Streets NW meet Massachusetts Avenue.

Franklin Square represents the largest opportunity for downtown parks. It covers an entire city block, yet doesn't see the kind of use and programming as similar spaces in other cities, like New York's Bryant Park. DPR will get $300,000 to work with the Office of Planning to plan a renovation for Frankline. Since NPS controls this park as well, they will need to give DC jurisdiction here as well before any actual changes can come.

Most of the money for these priorities comes out of a $16 million project ($8 million in the next fiscal year) to create a new DPR and DYRS headquarters at Gibbs School. The committee doesn't think that's such an urgent need, as DPR just moved into offices on U Street. The budget retains $550,000 for them to continue planning for their office needs. The 4 staff working on parks will come out of 60 existing vacant positions at DPR.

The committee also assigned $500,000 out of $5 million which Mayor Gray had set aside to implement the sustainability plan. Parks and recreation are a key part of the sustainability plan, so this money will still contribute to fulfilling the plan, only in a specific way the Council chose.

Kenilworth-Parkside residents are hanging in limbo after DC tore down their old recreation center only to find out that contamination on the site prevents building a new one. It'll likely take 7-10 years, say committee staff, for NPS to finish its environmental study, for DC and NPS to negotiate over who has to pay for remediation, and then design and build a facility. The Council instructed DPR to use some of the money it already has budgeted for Kenilworth-Parkside to find a short-term option for residents.

After the meeting, Peter May, Associate Regional Director for Lands, Resources, and Planning with the National Capital Region of NPS, approached us with his business card offering to join us on a walking tour to look at the property. We had already been talking with Councilmember Tommy Wells, who chairs the DC Council's commitee overseeing parks, and organized a group tour to see how NPS and the District could work together to build the much-needed playground.

The early December walking tour was an amazing show of cooperation on all fronts. Besides downtown playground advocates, May, and Wells, we had Bob Vogel, Superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks; Steve Lorenzetti, Deputy Director of National Mall and Memorial Parks; Daniel Connor, Deputy Director, DC Council Committee on Libraries, Parks, Recreation and Planning; and, members of the Washington Interfaith Network.

As a group, we spent over two hours walking around the neighborhood identifying potential sites for playgrounds and figuring out how to work together to make them happen. Almost all of the sites visited will require participation by both DC and federal officials, and in this meeting, we saw that such cooperation is possible.

Our walking tour included the four small pocket parks surrounding Carnegie Library; Milian Park, on the northeast corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 5th Street; Franklin Square, between 13th, 14th, I and K; and Pershing Park, on Pennsylvania Avenue between 14th and 15th.

Mt. Vernon Square pocket parks are best immediate opportunity

NPS officials felt that the 4 pocket parks surrounding Carnegie Library ought to have already been transferred to the District along with Mt. Vernon Square. Peter May said that the NPS would be willing to turn the land over to the DC government to accommodate play areas in those currently-empty spaces.

The small parks have a lot of potential for varied use and would be a great way to enliven the overall space. They could become an attraction and leave the open lawn of Carnegie Library as a place to gather for picnics or other activities.

To make that happen, Mayor Gray needs to send NPS a letter requesting the land. Tommy Wells promised to ask the mayor for such a document. This will start the process of creating what will, with any luck, become a world-class play space near the Convention Center.

Why downtown needs a playground

Right now, there are absolutely no playgrounds in the downtown DC area. Since the area is only newly residential, there was little need for playgrounds years ago. As more and more children move in to the neighborhood, they need space to play where parents needn't fear they will run into the streets.

The problem affects more than just downtown DC residents. School children from the surrounding areas lack sufficient play space, too. It is ironic that the closest public elementary school to the White House, Thomson Elementary, has absolutely no outside space to play.

First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move Campaign has, as one of its primary goals, to get kids outside and active. Yet, these kids have absolutely no opportunity to do so. Moreover, the children in this school are at high risk of suffering from obesity, as over 75% of the students qualify for free and reduced price lunch. It is unacceptable that these children get absolutely no opportunity to play outside.

To appreciate the severity of this problem, all you have to do is walk around the downtown area in the mid-morning on any weekday. You are sure to see some of the hundreds of toddlers and preschoolers being walked around on ropes by daycare supervisors. Much of the time, those children are not headed for any particular location, because there is nowhere for them to go. Instead, the caregivers are simply walking them around the block, strung together for safety, day in and day out.

Regulations require that the children spend this time outside, but neither the District nor the federal government (which controls most of the open space in the area) is providing a place for them to go to play. Those kids who are lucky enough to be in government daycare do have access to playgrounds, but those are fenced in and closed to the public. As a result, many children spend much of their childhoods holding onto a rope instead of learning to run and jump.

Until our parks catch up with the rest of the world-class development taking place in our capital's downtown, we will never have a truly healthy neighborhood. It will benefit all of us to reprogram our park spaces to be useful and beneficial to all.

Although the need is clear, it has proved difficult to meet because many different entities control the park space in downtown DC. Much of the property is federal land. Some is District land, some is private land, some is federal land leased to the District, and some is federal land turned over to the District which in turn leases it to private entities.

As a result, Congressional oversight, historical considerations, and the need to reserve space for future memorials all complicate considering any change to downtown green space. In short, it will take a lot of cooperation among numerous entities in order to bring play space to the neighborhood.

We are very thankful to everyone for the time and effort that they have already put into this project and that which will be necessary to fully realize our goals. Every child needs access to a playground, and we are very happy that NPS and the District government are willing to work together to meet this need.

If you are interested in helping us move forward on any of these initiatives or have other ideas for play spaces in downtown, please join us for our meeting Wednesday, March 14th, 6 pm at Calvary Baptist Church.

One of the great mysteries is dealing with the [National Park Service]. Numerous people have told me that NPS does not support playgrounds on the parks they control. However all of the parks in Capitol Hill are parks maintained by the NPS and they all have playgrounds. How did this happen? Did Congress intervene?

NPS playgrounds rare and hard-won

To get an answer for Ms. Armijo, I talked to Peter Harnik of the Trust for Public Land. He addresed this very issue in a Washington Post op-ed (pay required for full article) on October 10, 2004:

The almost 7,000 acres of national park land in the District contain a grand total of 11 playgrounds. If you include playgrounds on the 800 acres operated by the DC parks department, Washington's total reaches 71. This compares with 129 playgrounds in Baltimore, 162 in San Francisco and 504 in Chicago.

Each of the 11 playgrounds on national park land has a political history akin to the passage of some major piece of legislation. The newest one, which opened last winter on Capitol Hill, took a group of Lincoln Park mothers six years of campaigning and resulted in an unfenced tot lot rather than the adventure playground they had hoped for.

It's not just a problem for small children: Even counting the wide open spaces and recreational facilities of Anacostia Park, the Park Service provides only 18 soccer fields in the whole city, compared with, for instance, 75 on a smaller land base in Seattle.

Frustration felt citywide

Steve Coleman, of Washington Parks and People, says the challenges of getting NPS to accommodate children goes beyond downtown. He wrote in an email:

Yes, the parks on Capitol Hill tend to have playgrounds. Residents have generally only gotten their concerns addressed through massive community effort. Stanton Park neighbors, for example, had to campaign for years just to make simple safety upgrades to their play area.

For some, the wait is even longer. At Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, the Park Service approved, ordered, and began to install several play areas in the 1930's, then halted work because of budget cuts for World War II, never to be re-started. As a result, thousands of families living in the densest area of the city have faced the same dilemma as Chinatown residents of whether to give up on the neighborhood because of lack of adequate play facilities.

The Park Service has built some beautiful playgrounds in DC. But sadly, NPS has shown a tendency to build and care for play areas in some more affluent neighborhoods such as Montrose Park in Georgetown while providing far less care or support for the families living in many less affluent areas.

The Park Service's enabling legislation cites its mission as preserving the nation's natural and cultural resources unimpaired for the education, inspiration, and enjoyment of this and future generations. Many dedicated people in the Park Service work hard every day to advance this mission for all, despite budget shortfalls.

There are signs that Park Service leaders may want to finally address the under-investment and shortcomings of inner-city DC parks management. Yet in many under-served parts of the capital, the reality is that the enjoyment of this generation of children has been all too often left by the wayside.

Park Service spokesperson Bill Line did not respond to multiple emails sent over the course of 2 weeks asking for comment on Ms. Armijo's question.