Reply to Hearst Playground story in Current

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can't wait to take a dip in the wonderful new pool this year and hold a middle finger up to all the haters.  [/quote]

"Haters"?  Really?  Great that you like a new pool -- who doesn't? -- but it's uncivil and disrespectful not to acknowledge that there are people who have different views.  Some of them are immediate park neighbors who will be most impacted, and not entirely positively.  Others are those who feel that Hearst was the wrong site, or that the final location is the wrong one at Hearst.  Then there are others who are upset that there was no real site selection process undertaken (DPR reps will tell you frankly that the location was dictated by Councilmember Cheh), and note that this is not the only instance under Bowser and Cheh that major facilities decisions have been made without transparent analysis and public process.

And when did "haters" become synonymous with anyone who holds a contrary opinion or has a concern?

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People who have different views fought tooth and nail against a pool for overt NIMBY reasons cloaked in a variety of almost benign sounding reasons.

Hearst was never the wrong site, other than to the 20 people who live immediately around the pool. DC does not control Ft Reno, that was a red-herring to try to deflect construction there. And ironically, people in the Ft Reno neighborhood fought a public pool proposal a generation ago over racism.

There was a site selection process. Hearst won. Palisades was too far out of the way, Guy Mason was too close to Jelleff, Lafayette is in Ward 4, and the baseball people fought Turtle Park, so by default, it is Hearst. I, for one, am excited about a pool at Hearst, one that my kids can walk or bike to and where I can commune with my fellow pool-loving neighbors.

A pox on people who rue the sound of kids playing in a pool on a hot summer day.[/quote]

You’re grasping at a red herring.  I doubt that you’ve ever spent much time at Hearst park.   If you did, you would know that kids are not the issue.   The Hearst field  already is used very heavily during many weekends out of the year, for Stoddard soccer games that go from morning until evening on weekends.  These games attract players and their parents from all over, even beyond DC, and not just the immediate neighborhood.

Moreover, if there was a robust site selection process, please show us.   Link to the DPR analysis or paper on their website. We’d love to see it.  You probably won’t find anything because the site selection process was all in Mary Cheh’s head.  There was no formal process, no thorough consideration of alternative sites and instead she directed DPR to put the pool at Hearst.

You can prattle on with your false argument about kids all you want, but Hearst’s heavy use by kids belies your argument.   But I must admit to feeling a little sad that a number of trees have already fallen (well beyond the promises of DPR officials) and the character of this leafy green space forever changed, for a concrete canyon — on a sub optimal site chosen without any comparative analysis of other options —  that will sit empty 9 1/2 months out of the year.

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