On August 19, 2020, the DC Department of Parks & Recreation and Department of General Services held an initial community meeting about a new playground that will be built at Riggs-LaSalle Recreation Center. The rec center is located at 501 Riggs Road NE at the corner of Nicholson Street NE. The playground would be built on the Nicholson Street side of the rec.

The project website is https://dgs.dc.gov/riggs-lasalle. The presentation has not been placed on the website just yet, but a resident kindly passed along screenshots that I have placed below. (Update: The presentation is now on the project website at https://dgs.dc.gov/riggs-lasalle). If you have an interest in this project, please send comments to the project manager Peter Nohrden at peter.nohrden@dc.gov. Officials hope to start construction in fall 2020 with completion anticipated late 2020/early 2021. They have asked that people send comments in the next two weeks, so please send comments as soon as possible.

I suggest that people take pictures of things at other playgrounds that they really like and send that with their comments. This new playground will be limited by space and budget. The footprint they are working with is only 5,000 square feet, so there is not a ton of space for a vast array of playground equipment. The budget is only $550,000. The rec would really need (and could benefit from) a full redesign and layout to really have a larger, cohesive play space, and that is just not going to happen at this point.

Features of the proposed playground

• A play area for 2 to 5 year olds and a play area for 5 to 12 year olds. There is an Option A and an Option B for both so let officials know if you feel strongly about either option.
• New signage
• Shade trees and low maintenance landscaping
• A couple of benches oriented towards the play structures so that parents/guardians can keep an eye on their children and socialize
• Swing set with one toddler swing and two regular size swings
• Optional drinking fountain with bottle filler
• The playground would be ADA accessible
• The playground would be open 7 days/week and open to the public during school hours

A few suggestions raised during the community meeting

Some initial comments from residents who attended the meeting:

• Connect the new playground to the existing playground with a pathway
• Connect the new playground to the existing splash pad so that children do not have to cross an active driveway to go back and forth between the two
• Keep the existing playground open to the community. The existing playground is open to the community during non-school hours when school is in session.
• Supplement the existing playground with different items at the new playground so that children have more play structures.
• Remove or relocate the shipping containers on the field to increase the amount of space for a playground. These containers apparently have been used to store equipment for the football team, but it is not clear if the team needs that storage space. The project team is discussing that with the rec center staff.
• Remove the batting cages to increase the amount of space for a playground. Some residents seem to believe that the batting cages are not used. I believe they are used by baseball/softball teams, but I do not know for sure. Other residents stated they would like the batting cages to remain.
• Have more sitting areas for parents/guardians
• Include the drinking fountain
• Several residents expressed a desire for a walking path/track at the rec. DPR officials noted this is a longstanding desire, but noted the layout of the field make installation of a walking track difficult and doing a a full scale redesign of the field is cost-prohibitive at this time.
• Have a security plan in place

A few concerns & a little background

One of the big concerns that came up even before the meeting and one that has existed with the existing playground is safety. I mentioned in this post that the community worked for several years to get the existing playground opened back up to the community. It was finally reopened in June/July 2019. I did not go into all of the drama of getting that playground reopened.

The existing playground had been closed to the public for at least 8 years that I know of, but I am pretty sure it was closed for a longer period of time. The official reason we were given for its closure to the public was that it belonged to the school next door, LaSalle-Backus Education Campus. I served as president of the Lamond-Riggs Citizens Association (LRCA) from June 2017 to June 2019. We held a public meeting in February 2018 with members of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Cabinet. I asked parents to attend that meeting to ask the mayor about opening the playground to the public. In response to questions, the mayor stated that it should be open and that she did not know why it was closed. We let DC officials know that we were pretty sure the playground belonged to DPR not DCPS. [Note: At the same time, we were also working to get funding for a new playground because there was not a playground open to the public in the neighborhood at all. We did get a commitment for funding.]

There was a scramble with DPR, DGS, and DCPS doing research, and they eventually determined that the playground actually belonged to DPR and that the school had first right of use. The school would have exclusive use during school hours, and the school would be responsible for cleaning and maintenance of the playground during school hours. During non-school hours and on the weekends, the playground would be open to the public and DGS would be responsible for cleaning and maintenance. In order to open the playground to the public, DGS had to install an ADA ramp and a second entrance. So all of that was done and the playground was reopened to the public last summer.

Unofficially, many residents believe the playground was closed for so long because of safety reasons. I spoke with MPD officers who stated that they thought the playground was in a poor location, basically sitting in a valley behind a tall chain link fence, making it difficult for officers patrolling to see the playground from Riggs Road. DPR officials have said the same. Likewise, the playground could not be seen by officers patrolling on Nicholson Street because the playground sits behind the rec center. The playground was built years before the rec center. When the rec center was built, it was constructed with its back side facing the playground. That layout made it difficult for rec center staff to monitor the playground. As part of the reopening, DGS installed cameras on the back side of the building.

But really the issue is that the playground has been around for decades, so it was there during the crack epidemic. All sorts of things took place on the playground and kids were returning to school finding things they should not be finding on a playground. There are hot blocks in the neighborhood. Over time, the area around the rec became one of the hot spots. One would think people would not do antisocial, anti-community things around an elementary school and community recreation center that community residents lobbied to have built, but here we are.

So now the current president of LRCA, Rodney Foxworth, is objecting to a new playground on the pretense of public safety concerns and that “the community” was not notified. Public safety is a legitimate concern, but it is also a concern that exists regardless of whether this new playground gets built, as I noted above. The new playground would face Nicholson Street and would be visible from the street. DPR reached out to the ANC commissioner for that area ANC Commissioner LaRoya Huff (4B09) to do a site visit and talk about plans for the playground. Ms. Huff is also a current officer on the board of the LRCA. She is also a staffer for Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd.

I will go ahead and say it. One of the frustrating things about this conversation for me is that the loudest voices citing public safety concerns and problems with “process” are the ones who love to talk about how long they have lived in the neighborhood and they love to behave in an unwelcome manner to anyone who was not raised in the neighborhood or who moved into the neighborhood in the last 10 years. The people engaging in anti-community behavior near the rec are not strangers. They are people that long-time residents know. They grew up here. They are friends and relatives of long-time neighbors.

This notion that we should not have anything in this neighborhood because it will just get messed up is a hopelessness and fiction that I just cannot abide. Yes, we need to have a plan in place for making sure the playground stays clean and the equipment is not destroyed. That plan should already be in place for the existing playground. Yes, we should be realistic about the fact that prior to COVID-19, certain people liked to congregate in front of the rec and on the side of the building out of view of the cameras and engage in anti-community behavior. We should also tell the truth that they were permitted to do so. We do not actually have to just shrug and say welp when we see our own neighbors using a community space in ways making it difficult for that space to be used for its intended use, but that is what has been happening. We do not actually have to just shrug and say welp when long-time neighbors know the people responsible for the few shootings that have happened near the rec.

Last summer a few residents (not the loudest voices) and a DC government employee started a program working with some of the youth who would hang out at the rec, and that program was very promising. That is the type of work that we should be championing and expanding. There is a new Friends of Riggs-LaSalle Rec that is in the process of standing up. Once that organization is fully stood up, hopefully it will be an avenue to support this community space. Bottom line, I hope that as neighbors we actually do the work and work together to have the community we want.

Remember to send any comments about the proposed playground to Peter Nohrden at peter.nohrden@dc.gov.