Reply to Hearst Playground story in Current

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[quote=Anonymous]My son had a playgroup meet-up at Hearst ES today from 3-5PM so since there was a nice spot of shade at the edge of the Hearst ES soccer field I sat there and kept an eye on my son and the park and also did a walk around at the end with him.

Some observations:

In 2 hours on a beautiful summer Sunday a total of 3 people came to the park - all 3 came to let their dogs run illegally off leash on the soccer field.

In 2 hours on a beautiful summer Sunday only one pair of people came to play tennis and from 330-500PM not a single person used the tennis courts.

Most of the time we were there one group of teens was playing basketball and another group was practicing soccer on the Hearst ES field so the activity at this site is at the school not the park.

There is no lack of space in this park for an outdoor swimming pool - in fact the space is currently used quite inefficiently. The soccer field only uses up about 60 percent of the main field space and the apron around the tennis courts is much larger than necessary - on the north end of the tennis courts there is about 20 feet between the back line and the fence which is much more space than needed.  There is also a hitting wall with more surface space and even more level space to the east of the apron for the hitting wall that could be used.

The trees along Quebec Street (the south edge) and the Idaho Ave ROW (the east edge) are spectacular trees and certainly worth fighting for (though there is one tree in the southeast corner with quite a bit of dead branches in its upper extremities that is probably dying) but the trees along 37th Street (the West edge) are really nothing of note or worth preserving - most of the trees are junk weed species, several of the trees are dead and listing and several other trees have a fair amount of ivy wrapped around them which will kill them soon (so much for engaged neighbors taking care of the park) so to the extent that there is a need for additional space to shuffle things around it looks like you could easily extend the field 20-30 feet west with minimal tree removal (mostly bushes) and 30-50 feet if people could accept that the trees on the west edge are nothing worth saving though there is a slope in there so at some point you might need to add a retaining wall.  No one lives along 37th Street so those trees, such as they are, provide no useful visual buffer.  Also the mature trees go around the soccer field not the perimeter of the park and are to the north of the tennis courts not the south which matters when thinking about where the pool might go.

There is also a good amount of square footage in the northeast corner of the park (nearest Hearst ES) that is also not under any mature trees nor planted with any trees where you could get some usual square footage and you could increase it with some excavation and a retaining wall.

The Idaho Avenue ROW is much bigger than I realized and could be used for a dog park to get the dogs off the field or even a location for the tennis courts.

The complaints about people having to look at a locked pool some of the year are absurd - there are a generous number of trees both inside the park and along Quebec Street that would completely block views of the pool the 6 months of the year when trees are in bloom and partially block views the rest of the year to say nothing of the fact that wherever the pool goes it will be downslope from the street and essentially recessed from most folks lines of site.

The hydrology arguments also don't seem to me to make any sense (though I never took them seriously) but Quebec Street is uphill from the park so no one south of the park should have an issue.  The Idaho ROW is where water might drain out but to the extent that these concerns are legitimate there is plenty of space in there to add some water retention infrastructure or to connect to the existing storm drain system and by the way the mature trees everyone love are great at soaking up water.

There is no lack of space at this park to make this all work - both Volta and Jelleff have more programmed space squeezed into smaller parks.

Just put the pool where the existing tennis courts are and put the excavated part of the pool on the south end of the site and none of the mature trees will be impacted and the pool deck to the north will have the advantage of being under the mature trees everyone loves and by citing the pool there it will be almost invisible from the street.  Flip the soccer field so it runs E-W and excavate in the western hill and I think you have space for parallel soccer fields and that leaves enough space to put the tennis courts to the north of the soccer fields and also reduce to two tennis courts since that seems to be enough at every other DPR park I visit.

Or just keep it simple and replace the tennis courts with the pool and leave everything else as is though the soccer field is not well graded or in good shape so there is a case to be made for improving it.

I know the opponents keep saying the representations are not to scale but you can look at the satellite shots of the park and it is easy to find space to relocate the tennis courts including in locations that won't impact any trees.

It took me 14 minutes to ride to Hearst on my bike from Chevy Chase (past Military) at the speed of an elementary school student who hasn't been riding long.

There were lots and lots of parking spaces on the street on both 37th and Quebec Street - as in there were maybe 2 or 3 cars parked on 37th Street and there were 40+ available parking spaces and the Hearst ES parking lot was also completely empty so parking on a weekend summer day does not look likely to be an issue.

My wife was with my other son at the Bethesda Pool and said it was wall to wall people and that as usual they ran into people we know there.

There is no reason we can't have a pool at Hearst and no reason we should wait until 2020 for it and absolutely no excuse for any part of the hold up to be because we need to preserve the existing tennis courts.[/quote]

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