Slope Turf Field Getting Heavy Use But Controversy Brewing
The synthetic field that opened about a month ago in Washington Park (formerly J.J. Byrne) has been a huge success so far. On most days it gets a lot of traffic from schoolkids, and on nice weekends we’ve seen hundreds of people hanging out there. This section of the park used to be all asphalt…
The synthetic field that opened about a month ago in Washington Park (formerly J.J. Byrne) has been a huge success so far. On most days it gets a lot of traffic from schoolkids, and on nice weekends we’ve seen hundreds of people hanging out there. This section of the park used to be all asphalt and, at least in recent years, it was often under-utilized. According to Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, however, there’s community outcry about the hours the field will be open to the public, which after this week will be limited to 8-10 am on Saturday and 4-6 pm on Sunday unless users have a permit. One resident is leading a campaign to get it open to the public on a more regular basis.
Turf’s Down at Slope Park [Brownstoner] GMAP
Just wait until your kids are old enough for organized sports and you have games at 8 am and as late as 4 pm (even later for baseball/softball), and you don’t have any place for practice or stretching before competitions because there are thousands of kids trying to play soccer and baseball/softball on fields meant only for hundreds. My son plays peewee ball in the Park and the peewee fields are wedged in between the bigger kids’ diamonds. If a 10-year old hit a dinger, one of the 5 year olds could get beaned.
why not protect the field with a layer of asphalt
The field is very nice. I spent some time there trying to teach my son to walk this weekend.
2 hours saturday morning and 2 hours sunday afternoon for public access seems lame.
And I don’t get the permit thing.
The field is not organized for sports (e.g., no baseball diamond, no home plate, no soccer goals, nothing), and it is more than big enough for several small groups to picnic or play one.
So, what does one get a permit for? If I have a group of 6 people who want to throw a football around, do I get to reserve the whole giant field just for us?
And if I have my permit and you walk onto the field, how do I get you thrown off? Do I call the cops?
Idiotic stupid unenforceable regulations piss me off…
This is great. They put in field turf and now the big issue is that it will be over used. BTW the reason for the permits is sometimes to make sure the kids can use it and not be forced out by older people from the neighborhood. This has been a problem in other parks and is the probably what they are trying to prevent with the permit system….
Arent the people who have a permit (people who play in leagues, for schools, etc..) part of the “public”?