Renovation meeting Saturday @ Hodgkins/Curtin Park

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

The playground on Holland St. up towards Teele Square is scheduled for a million-dollar overhaul next spring. There's an informal meeting with a landscape architect from Weston & Sampson, the company the city has selected to lead the project, this Saturday from 2–3:30pm (rain date Sunday morning).

If you or your children (or, like a lot of us, you and your children) use this playground, please join us. This park and playground are very important to our community (the surprisingly vibrant pre-nightlife aspect of Davis Square), and we need to make use of all available lines of communication. I went to the Ward 7 ResiStat meeting last week, and came away feeling confident that the city really does want to take our wishes for our park into consideration — and that the mayor thinks sand is ew, icky.

   — Matthew

---

MEET THE DESIGNERS FOR THE HODGKINS-CURTIN PARK RENOVATION

The design consultant for Hodgkins-Curtin Park has been selected: the firm is Weston & Sampson.  The City is delighted that they will be designing this project.  Weston & Sampson has extensive experience with athletic fields and playgrounds.  The project manager is Cheri Ruane, who is a landscape architect, Somerville resident and mother of two young children.

You are invited to stop by Hodgkins-Curtin Park on Saturday, November 1 for an informal "drop-in" hour from 2:00-3:30pm. We will meet in the playground area.  We are hoping for good weather that is not too brisk...  The raindate will be Sunday, November 2 from 10:00-11:30am.

This is an opportunity to meet with the landscape architect more informally and discuss your experience of Hodgkins-Curtin Park and any desires for the renovation. Cheri Ruane and I will be in the park to talk about the design process and to take public comments.  Please stop by if you are in the neighborhood next Saturday!  If you are unable to come to the park that afternoon, feel free to call or email me any comments and I will pass them on to Cheri.

There will also be an evening community meeting to discuss the Hodgkins-Curtin Park renovation and initial analysis in the next few weeks.  I will email the details once the date and time are confirmed. By offering opportunities to meet Weston & Sampson on both a weekend and an weekday evening, we hope that everyone will have a chance to participate.

Again, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.  Hope to see you and other Hodgkins-Curtin Park neighbors on Saturday, November 1!

Best,
Ellen

Ellen Schneider
Landscape Project Manager
City of Somerville, MA
phone: 617-625-6600 x2529
eschneider [AT] somervillema.gov

You are receiving this email as part of the Hodgkins-Curtin Park renovation email list.  Please feel free to share this email and encourage anyone who would like to be on this list to drop me an email with their name, street address and email contact information.

Comments

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

It's past my bedtime, but I also wanted to add a link, in a sort of hopeful way, to this Boston Globe article on interesting playground design (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/30/plays_the_thing/?page=full) (although I certainly hope we get to keep slides and swingsets as well).

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info! I don't suppose there was any talk of incorporating a dog park into the new scheme? It'd be such a great place for one.

(Not that I have a dog, but still. Molly there belongs to a friend but I take care of her sometimes.)

dogs

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard any official talk of that — is anyone from somdog (http://somdog.org/) around? I think it's just redoing the ballfield (after the some soil contamination mitigation due to a buried oil tank) and the play structure area.

The park/playground is currently marked No Dogs Allowed, but that's widely disregarded, and understandably because it's not like there's any other options for green running-around space nearby. I personally don't mind as long as the dog owners are sensitive to the fact that there are small children around — and as long as they clean up any messes (there's often piles of nasty surprise over by the Simpson Ave entrance to the ballfield). As with ballot question 2, I say legalize and regulate.

Re: dogs

[alphacygni]

Kinda the way that EVERY "no dogs allowed" or "dogs on leash" sign in the city is widely disregarded? It would be nice if there were fewer places with such signs by having a few places actually designated for dogs, if it could also actually mean that the places with signs actually meant it.

Curiously...

[lizzyclean.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know why that area of sand is in the park? My friends and I often speculate and invent reasons why it's there, but I actually want to know what's up with it.

Re: Curiously...

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

I'm curious to know your inventions. :)

The scoop is: there used to be an elementary school where the ballfield is now. When that was torn down, they didn't bother with pesky things like "removing the oil tanks". So a few months ago when the orange plastic fence showed up, we were told:

The City is proceeding with some environmental testing at Hodgkins Park this summer. Soil testing began today, July 29th, and will continue through approximately Tuesday, August 12th. During this period, some areas of the field will be fenced off. This soil testing is a precursor to the eventual renovation of Hodgkins Park. Depending on the results of these tests, some earth removal and replacement may be necessary before renovations begin. Environmental professionals under contract to the City are managing both the sampling process and any earth removal that may be required.

I assume that the fenced off area was chosen because that's where the oil tanks were known to be. There doesn't seem to have been any testing of any other areas.

At the ResiStat meeting I asked why the fencing was still there, and was told that some contamination had indeed been found and that the fence was to keep people out of the contaminated area. So I mentioned that it might have been nice to, like, have a sign saying something along the lines of "Warning! Contaminated soil! Picnic over there on the soil we did not test and which therefore must have no problems!", to which I was told that oh no, there wasn't any contamination on the surface, it was all beneath the ground, and it's perfectly perfectly safe. Which brought me back to the "why is there a fence there still" question without actually getting an answer.

I think the truth is that they're all thinking "that park is gonna be all redone, so screw it". This is also demonstrated by 1) the tree they took down from the playstructure area, where they just left an orange sawhorse on top of the stump and a mess of sawdust 2) the slide which broke sometime mid-July and which they "fixed" by boarding up like a burnt-out tenement building. Also, duct tape.

Re: Curiously...

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

PS: this isn't the sand which the mayor thinks is icky. It's the playground sand he doesn't like.

Re: dogs

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

So dog does a poop and pees and owner lifts up the matter leaving ooze and worms on the grass? I'm sure trillions of little germy dudes are squirming all over the place where little kids are playing. Ya want a barking mammal in your tiny yard?

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

In my experience with the city's 'community input' process, I believe that the outcome is pretty much pre-determined. But feel free to attend and learn for yourself. It's a great lesson in civic participation.
And by the way, there ARE several areas specifically for dogs. However, the more hard-core dog owners in the city would prefer that all parks be for dogs before kids. They intentionally ignore the NO DOGS signs in any areas that they have determined SHOULD be for dogs, because it's in a convenient location for them. Read some of the postings on their web sites.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

In my experience with the city's 'community input' process, I believe that the outcome is pretty much pre-determined. But feel free to attend and learn for yourself. It's a great lesson in civic participation.

I think the situation here is somewhat different from the condo project you've got a message about in your journal. Significantly, there's not a big commercial interest pushing in the other direction. And, it really is early in the planning process, so I'm optimistic. We'll see, though.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

I've been involved in several neighborhood park renovations. The city seems to take neighborhood input into consideration, and up to a point I think that they do. But I do believe that much of the final outcome has already been determined. Some of this makes sense, such as the safest equipment currently available for playgrounds. But it does seem that the city has much of the plan already laid out, and they fit neighborhood input into it as well as they can. For instance, if the neighbors don't want swings perhaps swings won't be included, but if the neighbors want a different lay-out, or would like more play structures which are age-appropriate for, say, 10-12 year olds, it probably won't happen. I know, I've been to too many of these things and have become cynical, but I can't help it.