Playground Protection Quest Stalls In Dwight

The Dwight Community Management Team tabled a proposal to prohibit the city from ever giving up the only public park in a neighborhood — out of a concern that such a policy might interfere with the city’s legally-contested sale of Kensington Playground to an affordable housing developer.

That was the outcome of the Dwight neighborhood management team’s latest monthly meeting, which was held online via Zoom Tuesday night.

The group voted to table a proposal put forward by Dwight resident and Friends of Kensington Playground organizer Patricia Wallace.

The proposal, which Wallace has been bringing to community management teams across the city this spring and summer, would call on the city’s parks commission to ​“adopt a policy to never give up the only public park in a neighborhood, and to always have at least one playground per neighborhood with a playscape and splash pad or water element.”

According to Wallace’s presentation Tuesday night, community management teams in Dixwell, Downtown, Fair Haven, Hill North, Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills, and Westville/West Hills have already endorsed the proposal.

“This is to establish as a matter of policy that the city will commit to having at least one public playground that sets up well for kids and families to use” in every neighborhood, Wallace told the two dozen people on Tuesday’s Zoom call. The proposal would call on the parks commission ​“not to approve the sale or giving away of the only public playground in any neighborhood.”

“This is a forward-looking proposal to ask the Board of Parks Commissioners to commit to these things,” Wallace continued. ​“This is a basic thing for cities to provide to families and kids.”

Wait a minute, Greater Dwight Development Corporation Executive Director Linda Townsend said after Wallace’s presentation.

“This sounds so specific to Kensington Street Park.” Is this proposal directly about the months-long neighborhood and legal dispute about what’s going on at that playground?

Last year, the city parks commission and the Board of Alders voted in support of selling the 0.67-acre park on Kensington Street for $1 to The Community Builders (TCB). The Boston-based developer plans to build 15 new affordable apartments atop the public greenspace as part of TCB’s $30 million Phase 2 redevelopment of the adjacent Kensington Square apartment complex. The city in turn has agreed to set aside new public parkland in Newhallville, while TCB must invest $80,000 in improvements at the nearby city-owned Day Street Park.

In response, Wallace and the Friends of Kensington Playground sued the city in state court in a bid to stop the public land deal. That case remains active in state court.

So, Townsend said Tuesday night, is this proposal all about the Kensington Park deal?

No, Wallace replied. ​“This is a proposal that would direct a resolution to the Board of Parks Commissioners to have a policy that every neighborhood should have a playground.”

“Will it have an impact on that project, the Kensington Street project?” Townsend followed up.

“I don’t see how it would,” Wallace said. ​“It’s looking forward. … This is a forward-looking proposal for the parks department, not for Dwight.”

Fellow Dwight resident Kate Walton pointed out that the proposal has already been endorsed by management teams across the city.

Townsend said that’s likely been easy for them to do ​“because there’s no controversy about parks space” in those neighborhoods.

After that back and forth, management team Chair Florita Gillespie moved to table the matter for now so that the management team can continue discussing the matter at a future meeting before taking a vote.