Construction Will Dry Up Willoughby Entrance To Fort Greene Park

If you regularly find yourself (and perhaps your very messy dog or child) struggling through the mud while trying to enter Fort Greene Park from Willoughby Avenue, rejoice! Work is underway to keep the park’s squishiest entrance sufficiently dry from here on out.

Neighbor Francisco Daum, who snapped the photo of fencing above, also tipped us off that it was likely part of the Fort Greene Park Willoughby Avenue Entrance Reconstruction project. Now according to The New York Daily News, crews plan to install tanks under the sidewalk to catch water that currently sits stagnant on Washington Park following rain, and will also add a ramp for easier stroller and wheelchair access.

“Plans for the current project date back to 2008, but bureaucratic bungling has delayed it for years, leading to cost increases that forced the Parks Department and former City Councilwoman Tish James to kick in more money,” the publication says. The Parks Department lists only $1,372,794.90 in funding for the project, while the paper puts its price at $2.5 million. The publication also says the project might have started sooner, but besides delays caused by Hurricane Sandy, the Parks Department “failed to reach out to their counterparts in the Department of Environmental Protection to sign off on the plan.”

Charles Jarden of the Fort Greene Park Conservancy–a major contributor of funds for the project–tells the Daily News a list of other necessary improvements around the park has been made, though further details on potential future projects aren’t yet available.

The Willoughby entrance project page on the Parks Department website predicts a completion date of November 2015, though Jarden tells the paper work could take closer to 18 months.