Park View, D.C.

On the evening of September 10th, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) hosted a meeting to kick-off the community process to create a new, permanent 1-acre park at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Columbia Road. The meeting consisted of a brief overview of the Park Morton development (of which this is a part), and an overview of the site, the potential activities that could be programmed on the site, and a community activity to begin gathering information.

One process issue that arose was meeting location. Last night’s meeting was at the Bruce-Monroe at Park View School. DPR is working to schedule future meetings at the Cesar Chavez school on Kenyon Street.

(Neighbors in the cafeteria of the Park View School at the beginning of the park presentation.)

Following the presentation, neighbors were encouraged to review two park program boards and place stickers next to various programs to help guide the design process. To help gather greater input, DPR will also be distributing the survey electronically and plan to create paper versions for distribution. The goal is to get as much feedback as possible. Once collected, the information will be used to help prepare for the next meeting in the series.

Each person at the meeting got four stickers, one each of green, blue, yellow, and red. The colors indicated each persons first choice (green), second choice (blue), third choice (yellow), and least favorite (red). I’ve posted the results of that process below.

Thus far, two things pop out immediately. The first is that those who were at the meeting generally don’t want a tennis court. The second is that people either love or hate a dog park as most of the stickers were red or green.

It will be interesting to see how the input from the online and paper surveys add to these selections.