Community Board 12 Approves Dome Playground Redesign

Nearly one and a half years ago, Councilmember Brad Lander of District 39, members of Community Board 12, and Parks and Recreation Brooklyn Chief of Staff Martin Maher held a “visioning session” at PS 179 inviting Dome Playground regulars, its Borough Park and Kensington neighbors, and interested public to suggest changes and improvements they wanted the Parks Department to make at the playground located at Dahill Road, between 37th and 38th Streets during a renovation proposed by Councilmember Lander. Dome’s last upgrade took place in 2001, to the children’s play area, without any improvements to the basketball and handball courts’ area, or exercise bars.

A first for many there, attendees were randomly assigned to four groups to hash out their goals. Among the 60 or so participants were the Orthodox Jewish parents of young children, the sports enthusiasts — primarily male, from cricket players to dedicated basketball and handball players — local artists, and community activists. They displayed a dazzling array of countries, religions, colors, and attire. Quite a few came from Kensington around Avenue C, Cortelyou, and Ditmas Avenue. Parks summarized each groups’ recommendations on display boards. Hopes were very high.

Then more recently, on Tuesday, October 22, that “visioning” bore fruit when Community Board 12 approved Parks Department plan for the redesign of Dome’s main lawn and children’s playgrounds. The vote was 33 in favor, with 2 abstentions and 15 absent. Maggie Tobin, a representative of Kensington on the community board, was one of those who abstained.

For Councilmember Lander, this was a moment to savor. He‘d put together the $2.75 million needed to fund a Phase I redesign in record time.

“We have a great plan for a new and improved Dome Playground,” he said. “With state-of-the-art play equipment, new landscaping, and community areas, this will be a playground that our community will be proud of.”

He gave thanks to “a lot of community input and hard work by the Brooklyn Parks Department and my staff,” adding, “I look forward to continuing to work together to make Dome Playground great.”

At a public meeting at PS 179, just two weeks earlier on Thursday, October 3, Parks unveiled the completed Dome architectural plans for the first time. Brooklyn Capital Projects Senior Landscape Planner Terry Naranjo pointed out their highlights as he walked the audience through several perspective drawings and a schematic, pointing out the three playgrounds, the redesigned lawn, and the water play area adjacent to the expanded children’s playgrounds. He also showed off drawings of the new playground equipment.

It was the only time the public was allowed to comment on the plans. After that, the comment door was shut tight.

In spite of the meeting’s fairly short notice, a cross-section of Dome’s constituents turned out. It attracted about 25 people: four Latina and African-American handball and basketball players; a trio of adult Bangladeshis, including Community Board 12 member Mamnunul Haq; two Orthodox Jewish mothers; an ANA neighbor who’d attended the Stargazer event at Dome; and a few Community Board 12 members and supporters, all Orthodox Jewish men. Of course, Councilmember Lander and his staff were there too: District Manager Catherine Zinnel, and Gaby Friedlander, his Borough Park liaison, as well as Parks Brooklyn Chief of Staff Martin Maher and the Parks Landscape Designer Terry Naranjo. Here’s what we all learned.

At an earlier public meeting in April, Parks Capital Projects had itemized what it planned on expanding and what would go.

In addition to the boulders and stage, the new design eliminates the scuffed-up lawn area where tweens, boys and girls alike, can kick a ball around or play tag. And it’s taking out the sidewalk that surrounded the park’s central lawn where boys biked madly, “round about and round about and round about {they} go,” as A.A. Milne put it in his poem, Busy.

To this reporter, the greatest loss is the removal of the outdoor stage, where on a Sunday afternoon in May 2012, the Bangladesh Institute of Performing Arts and Latin Fever dance troupe danced and sang. The new “improved” Dome lawn area will preclude a follow-up. Tap shoes, Spanish heels, and toe shoes require a hard surface. A lawn will be too spongy — and fragile — even for bare percussive feet. In the redesigned park there will be plenty of play space for young kids but no room for public (adult) flights of fancy.

Furthermore, young adolescents — especially girls — seem totally ignored. According to recent studies, they lose interest in kids’ playgrounds as they grow older. To encourage them in physical activity, one experiment in Austria shows parks must reach out to accommodate them.

Perimeter Fence: Dome’s current wrought iron perimeter fence stays.

Many New Trees: Trees will be planted all around the perimeter of the main Dome area — and elsewhere — with particular emphasis on those corners that abut nearby residential buildings at the northeast and northwest. New trees will shade the new seating areas. The knoll of trees (see Parks drawing, last image below) will stay. As they grow, expect the trees to buffer the noise coming from the playground and the lawn seating area.

Expanded Playgrounds: Where once the playground area took up only the northwest quadrant, a new half circle play area for tots and 2- to 5-year-olds will replace the line of benches and sidewalk on the 38th Street side. In addition, a new feature, a water play area, melds with the plaza/seating area.

New Play Equipment: Parks’ newest play equipment will take over the northwest quadrant playground, allowing every child to crown his or herself king or queen of the castle. The swings will move from the lower northwest corner to the upper corner, near the Dahill Road side.

New Lawn Area: An ovoid shape replaces the old lawn’s rectangle area. The row of benches that framed it on the west and east sides of that lawn and its perimeter sidewalk will also go. In the new plan a half circle walkway takes you from one entrance to another on the 38th Street side.

The new lawn includes a seating plaza with moveable cafe tables and chairs at the northeast side. They are shown in the drawing not far from the court. The water play area is within close reach of each playground (the white tile area at bottom of circular lawn) and is separated from the lawn by a seating wall. Parks has sketched in a comfort station where the basketball court abuts the Dome lawn area, for consideration in a future upgrade.

The basketball and handball crew left in a huff. “Very pretty,” they growled as they hurried to the auditorium door, but they felt the courts and the players — who are at Dome Playground almost every single day — had been ignored and humiliated by not being included in this plan. The two Orthodox mothers insisted that the moveable café tables and chairs be banished. In their view the café tables would always be dirty.

A more robust conversation followed about how to lock up the playground so that no one could play or hang out there past a set curfew. Should the community wish to lock up Dome Playground each evening, the 66th Precinct commander insists it form an organization and do it itself. Except in the initial weeks, the police will not enforce the curfew. It’s the community’s baby.

The regulars at the evening basketball games will not welcome the community’s move. Night basketball is a neighborhood ritual, from Albemarle Playground to Dome.

Who rules public spaces is an issue that has come up before at Community Board 12. Is it the people who live around a park or plaza who decide what happens there, sets the curfew and the rules? Or does the larger community, the entire neighborhood that uses and supports the space determine its rules, as I’ve heard Parks people say?