Long-Delayed Project Transforms Playground Seemingly Overnight
By Alexander Eule
Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005

When students at Manhattan Public Schools 198 and 77 returned to school this fall, they were greeted by a gleaming new baseball diamond and running track in the small playground that lies behind their school.

What was once a standard blacktop at the 96th Street and Lexington Avenue playground was transformed over the summer into a versatile park with a full-size basketball court, a baseball diamond, 116-yard track, three additional basketball hoops and various other games.  

Parents and students welcomed the three-quarter-acre playground as a much needed improvement and an example of the way the city can make the best use of its space. Eight years in the making, the park, despite its small size, is also an example of the red tape that goes into any city project.

Following school on Wednesday, students were having a baseball catch on the new diamond, while parents sat on the sidelines discussing the merits of the improved space, whose concrete “field” is painted green with white lines and outlined bases.

“Bringing up kids in Manhattan is very, very hard,” said Irene McDonald, whose son is in fourth grade at PS 77, which shares the playground and adjacent school building with PS 198. “These kids are active. They need some place to play.”

Not wanting to be left out, a group of fourth grade students from PS 77 took a break from their catch to explain their own excitement about the renovated space. 

“It’s more baseball-ish,” Patrick Rubacha said.

His classmate Erroll Rhodes said the new park had already made for a friendlier baseball game.

“We always used to get mixed up and get into arguments,” he said, recalling the old blacktop’s faded lines, which made finding the bases something of a guessing game.

Cecil Flippen, whose daughter attends kindergarten at PS 198, grew up in the neighborhood and remembers playing in the park, which is also a public space called the Samuel Seabury Playground.

“It’s been old for a long time,” he said. 

While the new playground seemingly emerged overnight for students away from school during the summer, organizers said the renovations required eight years of careful coordination between the City Council, parks department, and school parents.

PS 77 Parent Coordinator Gina Goodman credits one of the school’s parents, Nanette Ross, for the project’s success. 

If not for Ross, Goodman said, the city “would have just gone ahead with another blacktop.”

Ross, who is PS 77’s chairperson for health and safety, said she first became involved in the project seven years ago when her eldest child was in kindergarten at the school. At that point, $100,000 had already been allocated to the renovation, but the effort lay dormant.

“I was really horrified at the way things looked,” Ross said about the state of the playground in 1998. “It wasn’t meeting good health standards. Kids were breaking arms on the jungle gyms.”

Ross also discovered high levels of arsenic in the wooden playground equipment, which carpenters treat with chemicals to avoid infestations.

Ross herself credits Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz with making the new park a reality after learning about the poor conditions.

“She jumped on it, and she was great,” Ross said.

Moskowitz, who serves Manhattan’s fourth district, ultimately funded the entire $1.4 million project from her discretionary budget, said Jenny Sedlis, the councilwoman’s director of community affairs.

Sedlis said Moskowitz was proud of the project.

“It’s just such a vast improvement over what was there before,” Sedlis said. “It was sort of a wasteland – a big open slab of concrete.”

Bob Redmond, the director of Manhattan capital projects for the city’s parks department said that it was not unusual for a city council member to fund such a project. 

“It’s something that when you want to do something in a neighborhood, you can make a real difference,” he said.

Redmond added that the groundbreaking or ribbon cutting for a park serves as excellent publicity for elected officials.

While enthusiasm was the overriding sentiment, the cost of the renovation did catch some parents by surprise Wednesday when they learned of the $1.4 million price tag.

That total covers a second phase of renovation, which will include a “shower spray” sprinkler and a flowing river spanned by footbridges, according to the project’s designer, Ricardo Hinkele, who is a landscape architect at the parks department.

The second and final phase is scheduled to be finished by the end of November.

Hinkele said he has designed a unique element for the sprinkler, which will have a granite and concrete floor engraved with a world map.

The architect said he hopes the map will help to expand students’ awareness of the world around them.

“It’s such a basic educational tool,” Hinkele said of the map. “Especially with a lot of foreign affairs issues in the news, it’s good to know where these places are.”

The delays, politics, and artistry, however, seemed lost on students playing in the park yesterday on the last full day of summer.

“All the girls have a place to play hopscotch now,” said Rhodes, the fourth grade boy at PS 77, who was happy baseball could now be played uninterrupted.