No the residents in AU Park WANTED the pool at Turtle Park. It was the NW Little League who fought it and prevailed.

Please understand the facts.

Silly. Of course, Mary Cheh is going to listen to AU Park. If they don't want a pool at Turtle Park, then that's off the list. That's where a lot of Cheh's voters are. Why do you think that Janney has already had like two or three renovations? Plus, Cheh is still pissed off at Cleveland Park and environs because residents had the temerity to question Cathedral Commons, which was politically important to her. So if other neighborhoods don't want the ward homeless shelter or don't want to sacrifice their parks for a ward pool, Mary knows just where to put them, along Idaho Ave. Next thing you know, they'll be putting a jail lockup along Idaho also. (Oh wait, there's already one there at the second district.)

Anonymous wrote:The difference is that Hearst is public space, programmed by DPR to serve the taxpayers of the District. What Sidwell or Hearst DCPS do has absolutely no bearing on what Hearst DPR does. It has a program to fill and needs to provide services to the residents of the city (ie Ward) where there are gaps as it relates to services in other parts of the city. That can be senior services, fencing classes (like people in Cleveland Park travel to Chevy Chase to take) or Yoga and yes, an outdoor pool.

It simply isn't a heavily used park, despite your constant claims that it is. You want to keep it that way. We get it. But unless you become Queen, you do not get to dictate how the park is used or by whom. It just doesn't work that way.

If you don't like it, I can about guarantee that there will be a bidding war for your house with people who actually want a pool and expanded city services at Hearst.

And to the person who said there was no study, I can't claim to know that, but someone upthread posted a DPR study indicated that need to place two outdoor pools west of Rock Creek Park.

It has already been hashed why some of the other parks won't work. There just aren't that many left to consider, but claiming it needs to go somewhere else is an elitist attitude. Just because the 20 or so closest residents may oppose this doesn't mean that it isn't for the greater good.

This is a once in a generation opportunity to get an outdoor pool close to where we live. Everyone who wants to see this happen should let their ANC Commissioner and Mary Cheh know that you support this.

What someone on this thread said was that Friendship (Turtle) Park was out because park users didn't want to sacrifice a ballfield and other facilities. Hearst Park is a smaller footprint than Friendship, so it's all the more obvious that putting a pool in means that certain other facilities will need to come out. Why is it not "elitist" for users of other Ward 3 parks to stand up for their uses, but it's elitist in the case of Hearst Park (which seems even more unsuitable for a pool)?

The difference is that Hearst is public space, programmed by DPR to serve the taxpayers of the District. What Sidwell or Hearst DCPS do has absolutely no bearing on what Hearst DPR does. It has a program to fill and needs to provide services to the residents of the city (ie Ward) where there are gaps as it relates to services in other parts of the city. That can be senior services, fencing classes (like people in Cleveland Park travel to Chevy Chase to take) or Yoga and yes, an outdoor pool.

It simply isn't a heavily used park, despite your constant claims that it is. You want to keep it that way. We get it. But unless you become Queen, you do not get to dictate how the park is used or by whom. It just doesn't work that way.

If you don't like it, I can about guarantee that there will be a bidding war for your house with people who actually want a pool and expanded city services at Hearst.

And to the person who said there was no study, I can't claim to know that, but someone upthread posted a DPR study indicated that need to place two outdoor pools west of Rock Creek Park.

It has already been hashed why some of the other parks won't work. There just aren't that many left to consider, but claiming it needs to go somewhere else is an elitist attitude. Just because the 20 or so closest residents may oppose this doesn't mean that it isn't for the greater good.

This is a once in a generation opportunity to get an outdoor pool close to where we live. Everyone who wants to see this happen should let their ANC Commissioner and Mary Cheh know that you support this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you are expecting your neighbors to provide hypotheticals. No one knows. I can guess, but so can you. It isn't worth the 0's and 1's that it would take. I would rather wait and see what the plan is and go from there. Meanwhile, you are just exposing yourself to being an elitist worry wart.

So it's "elitist" to like the playground/soccer field/tennis courts/grass? Wow.

Over this past weekend, I went by the park about 6 or 7 times, biking doing errands etc. In all of the times I went by, there was exactly one time that one court was being used. There were some people walking their dog on the "grass" field. There were a ton of kids/families at the playground.

Really, for how nice i was, the park was way underutilized.

The NIMBY motivation against the pool is 90% based on keeping Hearst quiet and underutilized. If the pool were reserved for just the 100 households closest to the park then everyone against it would suddenly change their minds.

You make it seem like the Hearst Park area is some quiet, under-utilized oasis from which the neighbors want to exclude "outsiders." Bear in mind how many Sidwell Friends students arrive daily for school (most living outside the neighborhood) and for Sidwell programs in the summer. Hearst School is something like 70-80% out of boundary students who by definition arrive from somewhere else. Many of the Hearst students also use the DPR facilities. On the weekends, especially during fall and spring, Hearst field is utilized round the clock by recreational soccer teams, most of whose members arrive from outside the neighborhood. Toss around words like "quiet", "elitist", "reserved", "NIMBY" all you want to deflect.

The reality is that people (many of whom come from outside the neighborhood) care deeply about this green but heavily used park and don't want to see facilities lost and trees cut down for an expanse of concrete.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you are expecting your neighbors to provide hypotheticals. No one knows. I can guess, but so can you. It isn't worth the 0's and 1's that it would take. I would rather wait and see what the plan is and go from there. Meanwhile, you are just exposing yourself to being an elitist worry wart.

So it's "elitist" to like the playground/soccer field/tennis courts/grass? Wow.

Over this past weekend, I went by the park about 6 or 7 times, biking doing errands etc. In all of the times I went by, there was exactly one time that one court was being used. There were some people walking their dog on the "grass" field. There were a ton of kids/families at the playground.

Really, for how nice i was, the park was way underutilized.

The NIMBY motivation against the pool is 90% based on keeping Hearst quiet and underutilized. If the pool were reserved for just the 100 households closest to the park then everyone against it would suddenly change their minds.

I would guess that a lot of the skepticism about a pool comes from families whose kids play on the heavily used soccer field and don't want to see it mini-sized to accommodate a pool. Others who walk to the park on a daily basis likely will chain themselves to the old mature trees before any are felled for a pool.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you are expecting your neighbors to provide hypotheticals. No one knows. I can guess, but so can you. It isn't worth the 0's and 1's that it would take. I would rather wait and see what the plan is and go from there. Meanwhile, you are just exposing yourself to being an elitist worry wart.

So it's "elitist" to like the playground/soccer field/tennis courts/grass? Wow.

Over this past weekend, I went by the park about 6 or 7 times, biking doing errands etc. In all of the times I went by, there was exactly one time that one court was being used. There were some people walking their dog on the "grass" field. There were a ton of kids/families at the playground.

Really, for how nice i was, the park was way underutilized.

The NIMBY motivation against the pool is 90% based on keeping Hearst quiet and underutilized. If the pool were reserved for just the 100 households closest to the park then everyone against it would suddenly change their minds.

Can I see your numbers on that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you are expecting your neighbors to provide hypotheticals. No one knows. I can guess, but so can you. It isn't worth the 0's and 1's that it would take. I would rather wait and see what the plan is and go from there. Meanwhile, you are just exposing yourself to being an elitist worry wart.

So it's "elitist" to like the playground/soccer field/tennis courts/grass? Wow.

Over this past weekend, I went by the park about 6 or 7 times, biking doing errands etc. In all of the times I went by, there was exactly one time that one court was being used. There were some people walking their dog on the "grass" field. There were a ton of kids/families at the playground.

Really, for how nice i was, the park was way underutilized.

The NIMBY motivation against the pool is 90% based on keeping Hearst quiet and underutilized. If the pool were reserved for just the 100 households closest to the park then everyone against it would suddenly change their minds.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you are expecting your neighbors to provide hypotheticals. No one knows. I can guess, but so can you. It isn't worth the 0's and 1's that it would take. I would rather wait and see what the plan is and go from there. Meanwhile, you are just exposing yourself to being an elitist worry wart.

So it's "elitist" to like the playground/soccer field/tennis courts/grass? Wow.

Over this past weekend, I went by the park about 6 or 7 times, biking doing errands etc. In all of the times I went by, there was exactly one time that one court was being used. There were some people walking their dog on the "grass" field. There were a ton of kids/families at the playground.

Really, for how nice i was, the park was way underutilized.

If they built a multi-lane concrete surface connector road through Hearst Rec Ctr land from Wisconsin to Reno Road, then the land would be way more utilized.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the folks who demand an outdoor pool are the outrageous elitists. When I was a kid my Mother took us to public pools all over the city. What the ward 3 pool people are saying is that they want a pool of their own so that they don't have to see other people from other parts of the city. There are plenty of pools in this city but they serve the kind of diverse populations that a pool in Cleveland Park won't serve. If you don't think that is the unarticulated reasoning behind a ward 3 pool then you are too naive for words.

No, the city has an obligation to provide services to its residents. There is no reason why any families would need to travel across the city to come to an outdoor pool in Ward 3 just like there is no reason why anyone in Ward 3 should need to drive to someone else's neighborhood to enjoy an outdoor swim in the summer. We pay taxes - the same taxes as people in trukey thicket or Anacostia. Why shouldn't we have a pool too? YOu are just scared that "they" are going to come to your neighborhood.

No real dog in this fight and in general terms who doesn't want to have a pool? But it's pretty clear that no analysis was done of the Hearst Park site, the DC agencies are publicly taking pains to say that they weren't involved in the siting decision, and everyone seems afraid to release even basic concept plans because a pool likely won't fit there without removing existing facilities and trees.

Anonymous wrote:I think the folks who demand an outdoor pool are the outrageous elitists. When I was a kid my Mother took us to public pools all over the city. What the ward 3 pool people are saying is that they want a pool of their own so that they don't have to see other people from other parts of the city. There are plenty of pools in this city but they serve the kind of diverse populations that a pool in Cleveland Park won't serve. If you don't think that is the unarticulated reasoning behind a ward 3 pool then you are too naive for words.

No, the city has an obligation to provide services to its residents. There is no reason why any families would need to travel across the city to come to an outdoor pool in Ward 3 just like there is no reason why anyone in Ward 3 should need to drive to someone else's neighborhood to enjoy an outdoor swim in the summer. We pay taxes - the same taxes as people in trukey thicket or Anacostia. Why shouldn't we have a pool too? YOu are just scared that "they" are going to come to your neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you are expecting your neighbors to provide hypotheticals. No one knows. I can guess, but so can you. It isn't worth the 0's and 1's that it would take. I would rather wait and see what the plan is and go from there. Meanwhile, you are just exposing yourself to being an elitist worry wart.

So it's "elitist" to like the playground/soccer field/tennis courts/grass? Wow.

Over this past weekend, I went by the park about 6 or 7 times, biking doing errands etc. In all of the times I went by, there was exactly one time that one court was being used. There were some people walking their dog on the "grass" field. There were a ton of kids/families at the playground.

Really, for how nice i was, the park was way underutilized.

Anonymous wrote:I think the folks who demand an outdoor pool are the outrageous elitists. When I was a kid my Mother took us to public pools all over the city. What the ward 3 pool people are saying is that they want a pool of their own so that they don't have to see other people from other parts of the city. There are plenty of pools in this city but they serve the kind of diverse populations that a pool in Cleveland Park won't serve. If you don't think that is the unarticulated reasoning behind a ward 3 pool then you are too naive for words.

Oh, the bus lines -- you're forgetting the bus lines that prople keep citing.

All the people that claim bus lines make Hearst accessible as a recreation spot available to all DC residents have never used the buses. Getting anywhere that requires a walk to a stop, a wait for a bus, and a ride through a few neighborhoods makes a 30+ minute experience one-way. Throw in a cross-town route, a bus transfer, and weekend schedules, and the trip could easily be 1.5 hours from many parts of DC.

It's disingenuous to claim it's a site that works for 'everyone.'

I think the folks who demand an outdoor pool are the outrageous elitists. When I was a kid my Mother took us to public pools all over the city. What the ward 3 pool people are saying is that they want a pool of their own so that they don't have to see other people from other parts of the city. There are plenty of pools in this city but they serve the kind of diverse populations that a pool in Cleveland Park won't serve. If you don't think that is the unarticulated reasoning behind a ward 3 pool then you are too naive for words.

Park conservation is elitist, didn't you know?