Marine Park Residents Fighting a Playground, Makes Children Sad Who Designed it

A $111 million plan, part of the mayor’s PlaNYC initiative, schoolyards to playground, aims to add over 200 acres to the city’s parks by 2010 by opening 290 schoolyards to public use playgrounds after school hours and during the weekend.

When school is out of session, local residents will have free reign of the playgrounds, with the the usual 8 a.m. until dusk restrictions. During the school year, the spaces will stay open on weekday evenings and all day during the weekend.

Marine Park’s P.S. 207 (4011 Fillmore Ave) is one of the schools that are part of the mayors plan. At the most recent Marine Park Civic Association meeting, the kids who had a part in designing the park, were there to show off and present their designs to the community. Then when the plans were introduced at the meeting by the children residents of Kimbal and Coleman Streets started to protest the park. The kids were obviously sad, they were just there to show off their designs to what they thought was an open community, after all who would protest a park?

The next scheduled Marine Park Civic Meeting will be May 20th @ 8:00 P.M at P.S. 207. However, there will be a meeting specifically to discuss this project with the Marine Park Civic Association and the P.S. 207 principal, yet to be scheduled.

Here is some more info on Schoolyard to Playgrounds.

To increase the amount of open space, Mayor Bloomberg has pledged to open 290 schoolyards in underserved neighborhoods and has committed $111 million in capital funding for playground improvements. The schoolyards will be open after school, on weekends, and during school breaks. Opening these spaces after hours will make playgrounds available to approximately 360,000 New York children by 2010. Sixty nine of these playgrounds were opened July 1, 2007.

The Parks Department has teamed up with the Department of Education and the Trust for Public Land (TPL), which works in cities across America to conserve land in order for people to enjoy local parks, playgrounds, and natural areas. Working together, the Parks Department, the Department of Education, and TPL will turn the remaining 221 schoolyards into model community parks through a participatory design process designing with ideas that are generated by the school community, including children, parents, and teachers. This design process facilitates exciting inter agency and community coordination and opens up dialogue to ensure continued success.