Reply to Hearst Playground story in Current

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My high-schooler son had a game at Hearst on Saturday, so I paced off the field. By my count, the playing surface -- between the lines -- is 60 yards wide and 105 yards long. Please keep keep that in mind as DGS shops plans for replacing it with an elementary-school sized field.[/quote]

Sunday was a beautiful day with the park heavily used.  When I was there two team groups were practicing on the soccer field at the same time, another advantage of a rare large-sized field.  All of the tennis courts were in use.  It's sad to think that DC would be shortsighted enough to sacrifice one or both of these much utilized recreational assets, not to mention much of the old tree canopy as well.  If the pool were built, it would still not open for the season for another seven weeks and then would close again by Labor Day.   The rest of the time, it would sit empty, a fenced, concrete enclosure taking up scarce, valuable athletics space in this modest-sized park.  The trade-off equation at Hearst just doesn't balance.[/quote]

The slopes surrounding the field could be excavated to create enough extra square footage to allow for the pool and the field.  This isn't rocket science.  [/quote]

Which would mean that much of the park then would sit in a bathtub with 20 - 25 foot concrete retaining walls up to the 37th St sidewalk (with another chain link fence on top).  It would look like a prototype of Trump's border wall.   :x   And the excavation you propose to create more flat surface area at the field level would no doubt result in the removal of a number of mature oaks.  When will people just acknowledge that Hearst is just too small a site for even a smallish pool, without major sacrifices of existing park recreational uses?!  The only reason that DC DPR is even talking about Hearst is Cheh, who without much thought and no analysis, decided to attach pool funds to a planned park project because it was the bureaucratically easiest path.[/quote]

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