Hearst Playground story in Current
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Anonymous
Hearst is not a small park - not sure why we have to keep going over this though I'm starting to wonder if some neighbors think this because they never go to Hearst of any other DPR facilities. I do and can tell you Hearst is actually pretty big and also underutilized by DPR standards. And no one has ever said that there won't be trade-offs. The lightly used tennis courts will almost certainly have to be moved. And maybe there will be fewer tennis courts. But so what - a pool will result in greatly more people using this park and this is a good thing and something DPR should be working towards regardless of the baseless objections of the immediate neighbors. |
Anonymous
And you are making stuff up - I've coached my kids teams in both Stoddert and NWLL and most of the fields are heavily programmed. In fact I have actual experiences with both Palisades Rec and Stoddert ES/Rec and both are almost always programmed all day on Saturday - Stoddert in fact hosts both soccer games and baseball games often times back to back on the schedule. Also I have no idea where you came up with your 10% number - I suspect it is a wild guess but if it is based on something please provide a citation. BTW since the second grade games at Hearst that you cite can happen with two games being played simultaneously playing that many games does not require anywhere close to 9 hours - have you ever been to Carter Barron or Stoddert ES when there are 8-10 games being played at a time? For most of the day? I'm glad Hearst is seeing some soccer games but the usage there is hardly something to brag about. |
Anonymous
I'm not making anything up. From talking to people in the DPR permit office I've learned that there are roughly 20,000 kids in all of the programs that use DPR fields, and roughly 2,000 of them play baseball. A link to the DPR inventory of fields was posted upthread, you can easily verify that two thirds of the DPR fields are baseball fields. By far the largest baseball organizations are Cap City and NWLL. NWLL has their teams listed on their website. By age group: Single A 8 teams Double A 13 teams Triple A 11 teams Majors 8 teams Intermediate 2 teams Juniors 1 team Total 43 teams. Maximum roster size is 14, if every team were full that would be a maximum of 602 players. I couldn't find Cap City's list of teams, but their calendar shows 20 games per week so let's say they're about the same, I think they're actually a bit bigger. By comparison, according to the National Capital Soccer League there are over 10,000 youth soccer players in DC who play in leagues that are affiliated with US Soccer. Stoddert Soccer alone is about 7,000 players. There's probably another couple thousand who play in unaffiliated organizations like DC Scores and DC Youth Futbol Club. On top of that are lacrosse, flag football, frisbee, tackle football, rugby -- and all of those sports are competing for the same, scarce, rectangular fields. So how does this equate to actual usage? At Hearst, the morning games are second graders, each "match" is actually two side-by-side 5v5 games and there are two matches at a time. Each team is about 14 kids, there are ten from each team playing and four resting during the game, so at any given time there are 40 kids playing and about 16 resting. Matches last an hour and go from 8am to 1pm; in five hours about 280 kids get to play. At 1:00 they take fifteen minutes to move the goals, high school games start at 1:15 and go until 5:00. Those games are 11v11, maximum team size is 22 and average is about 18. Games last 1:15, so three games are played between 1:15 and 5:00, involving about 108 kids. So just at one field in one day about 388 kids get to play -- more than half the size of either NWLL or Cap City. Let's compare that to two fields I'm familiar with, Palisades and Stoddert. At each, NWLL plays two games per day on Saturdays. Games are scheduled to last two hours, with an hour in between for warmups. At each field 4 teams, or 56 players, get to participate. Now it's true that both of those locations are also used for soccer. Palisades has a separate soccer field, which hosts eight games per Saturday or 224 kids. Stoddert is multipurpose, and used for soccer in the morning and baseball in the afternoon. In the same space where NWLL runs two games per day, Stoddert runs thirty games per day -- five games per hour, between 8am and 2pm. That's almost 700 kids -- more than the entire population of NWLL -- in one half day. And the reason for this has nothing to do with the nature of the game. Soccer players would love to play two hour games with an hour for warmups, and have the field to themselves. Crowding is a pain, not having time between games is a pain. It's all about how DPR views different sports. Baseball is a "real" sport, soccer isn't. Baseball gets field space, other sports don't. The broader points in this are that a) Hearst is heavily used; but b) DPR is a terribly mismanaged agency, and they have no sense of serving the public. They do a terrible job of utilizing their facilities, and matching the facilities they have to the needs and desires of their customers. |
Anonymous
Unless the tennis courts are moved to where the basketball court is on the upper terrace, then they will have to go where the large field is. This will result in shrinkage of the large field to a smaller field. |
Anonymous
You may be right - I'm skeptical of your numbers since DPR permits don't include the number of users and in any case DPR serves a lot of kids that aren't going to show on permits or use fields - but I don't want to waste time arguing about it because it isn't really central to the discussion here. And FWIW I agree DPR is a poorly run agency but don't agree that it follows from that that they favor baseball over other sports. But I disagree that Hearst is heavily used - the soccer field based on the evidence you have offered is heavily used on Satudays in the fall (and I presume Spring). My anecdotal experience is that no one is using Hearst in the summer and that the Tennis courts are lightly used and others have echoed that. While driving between two Stoddert games on Saturday morning we stopped at Hearst ES for their E-cycling event - only one of the 3 tennis courts was in use on a beautiful fall weekend day and often this summer when I went by none of the tennis courts were in use, even on the weekend. But in any case the soccer field is not under threat just the tennis courts. So since you just spent some time justifying the necessity of the soccer field because soccer fields serve far more users than baseball fields your own logic would dictate that the tennis courts be torn out for a pool which would no doubt serve the same purpose. |
Anonymous
There is plenty of room for the tennis courts elsewhere inside of Hearst. The neighbors endlessly complain about the accuracy of the pool size estimates but you can see from the DPR slides or any satellite shot of the park exactly how large a tennis court is and the spaces where you could fit them and there is plenty of room. I'm not sure why DPR should spend money on new tennis courts when the existing ones are lightly used but if that is a priority it isn't hard to do. |
Anonymous
r DPR's plan showed that new tennis courts would go on part of the footprint of the existing field. Look, I get that you don't value tennis, but it seems foolish to substitute a facility that will be used only three months per year for an existing one that is used eight months per year. |
Anonymous
All of the designs I've seen show the soccer field shrinking. |
Anonymous
I don't value tennis even though I grew up playing it. But my opinion is colored by my observations from spending a lot of time at DPR facilities and I mean a lot time - I'm 7 years into having 2 kids playing baseball and soccer and have been all over the city at DPR facilities and the tennis courts are never fully utilized. It isn't just Hearst - it is Palisades, Turtle Park, Volta, Chevy Chase Park, Fort Reno, Fort Stevens, Rose, Lafayette etc. It is rare that I ever see all of the courts being used and common that none of the courts are being used. In fact the first 3 years my eldest was playing and I had to pass the game time with the youngest we always passed it on the tennis courts because it was often the only part of the park that was not in use so that was where we could find space to hit some balls or kick around the soccer ball. There is some institutional DPR inertia here - DPR has always provided these courts so they are going to be inclined to continue providing them. But we have lots and lots of tennis courts in Ward 3 despite the lack of use (the courts at 39th and Newark and the courts at Fort Reno are within comfortable walking distance of Hearst) so what does it matter if the pool would only be in use 3 months out of the year if it is replacing such a light usage. Rather than respond to me have a look at the tennis courts at various DPR facilities and let me know how often they are being utilized and try to justify the DPR dedication to that recreational space? And the discussion should probably go beyond replacing tennis courts at one park with a pool - as an example the Palisades skate park gets very heavy usage by tweens while again the tennis courts in the same park sit unused yet DPR isn't proactively thinking about better uses for its limited land. |
Anonymous
I would say the causality goes the other direction: they favor baseball because they are poorly run. They have a ton of institutional inertia, baseball was big in the 1950's and they're unable to catch up. But here's the thing: it's all connected. The reason this pool proposal is such a horror show is that DPR is poorly run. They don't know how their facilities are used or who uses them. So much of this controversy was completely avoidable. |
Anonymous
The courts at 39th and Newark are going to be used for "temporary" parking for DC vehicles while the homeless shelter at Cathedral Commons and a parking garage are being constructed. They may never return, as their reconstruction no doubt will depend on a special appropriation in the out years. However, the area behind the new homeless shelter might be perfect for a pool, and would enable it to serve Ward 3's least fortunate. |
Anonymous
It might be perfect for a pool. Or we can put the pool in a perfectly suitable location that is available now and doesn't depend on X, Y and Z going perfectly to work. |
Anonymous
| Why wasn't Turtle Park slated for a pool? AU Park is Northwest's 'kid central', and the park is several times the size of Hearst. A pool comfortably could have replaced just one of three baseball diamonds -- with no impact on the other two diamonds, the large playground, the new shelter or the tennis courts. By contract, Hearst has one playing field, which likely will have to shrink if the pool is built there. |
Anonymous
It is subjective that the pool proposal has been a horror show and that is an opinion that I bet is only held by immediate neighbors with other reasons for feeling that way. And this is really a sidebar argument here but you've not in any way proven that baseball is unpopular. Because of where we live my kids have been able to participate with both of the Little Leagues operating in NW DC and both Little Leagues turn away kids every season at all 4 levels. Baseball is a problem from a resource perspective because the fields are large and the games long but its not that different from soccer in either regards once the kids get bigger. But that really has nothing to do with whether a pool is appropriate at Hearst. |
Anonymous
Turtle Park is not several times larger than Hearst - why do the neighbors keep repeating things that are demonstrably untrue? There were some folks, including immediate neighbors, who wanted a pool at Turtle Park. But unlike Hearst Turtle Park is intensely used in the summer and a pool would have come at the expense of an existing popular use. A pool at Hearst is not going to come at the expense of any popular summer use. Furthermore Hearst is much more centrally located and easier to reach on public transportation - there is just a single very intermittent bus route that runs by Turtle Park. |