hello everyone my name is roger colton and i'd like to welcome you to this week's show of community conversations on behalf of the belmont citizen herald i would like to thank the belmont media center for making its studios available to provide this public service through the community conversations podcast we hope to bring varying parts of the belmont community to the public we hope to make the process of learning about dhamma not only educational but fun as well in today's show i have invited julie crockett to join us julie is head of the friends of the p q park group the p q playground is currently going through a planning process to determine how it might be renovated and updated we're going to talk about that planning process today julie welcome to community conversation sand thank you for being being willing to talk with me on today's show thank you i'm glad to be here before we talk about the playground tell me a bit about yourself you live close to that p q playground right yes i mean my husband moved here from seattle about five years ago and i have two children now three  twelve years old eight years old and a new baby and do you use the p c playground we do use the peaky playground we think the playground our park and it's the closest one and if i walk to a park i always walk to the the playground is as you know a long bartlett avenue and i live at the end of bartlett avenue at the intersection of bartlett  so you're not right on the edge of the playground but you're you're very close we're very close and there is a friend's group right there that you're involved with yes so friends of p q park started simply to raise awareness of the park and needed renovations and little things that we had asked the town to do or could simply use the town's help with we got in touch with the town and very quickly they were attentive they remove some graffiti they painted some areas that it had rusted and so we find that if we have the friends of p q park there's a conduit between us and the d p w in the town to very quickly get some things noticed in taking care of even though they meant may not be over there and they may not see it as often as i do now we've we've used a couple of terms here there is the peak you park on the one hand and there is the p hugh playground on the other hand is that is there a distinction between those two are we just using two words for the same thing there is a distinction so the group is called the friends of p q park and that group is anyone in the neighborhood who uses the park who wants to be involved where it any user or  trying to have them have the opportunity to participate there are two arms of principia park one is simply a community group and if you have concerns about apartment avenue you can reach out to us and we have someone who will be the conduit with the town and get you answers about that if it's related to the playground then you contact me and i help people understand the playground process we're going through and invite them to be involved in the renovation now when i st moved to belmont thirty seven years ago i lived on maple street and the peak you feel i called at the peak you field but there p q park which is basically my backyard when i think of the park as a whole i think of the tennis courts right there behind the v f w hall and i think of the feel the soccer fields and then there's the basketball court and then there's the playground so that's the  when we talk about the renovation it's to the playground which is on the bar side of the park as a whole right that's correct so what we're looking at is the bartlett side or what we call the southwest side of the park and the areas that we are looking to redesign are at the current playground area as well as the underutilized is how we are approaching an underutilized areas between the basketball court and the trike and between the basketball court and maple street those are also part of the planning process and those are going to be part of the design whether some of those stay green spaces or not we're just going to include them as you know what are some possibilities of what could be put before we get too far  in to talking about the planning process and before we leave the the friends group if i wanted to become involved with the friends of the p q park group whether it's with the playground or something else what would i do so we have signs up at the park and that is to attract people who already use the park rather than reach out to everyone in the community which we're also trying to do we decided that putting signs up at the park was the best way to let people know about us in the best way to recruit members and so they can join our facebook group we have a google group over there or so that was quite clever i thought that that wasn't me who actually did it and i'm not the one who actually ordered the sign and put it out but those are ideas that were generated within the park and then you know someone stepped up and said hey i can take care of that that's great well let's let's talk about the planning process that going on out there is a planning for the updating and renovation of the playground can you talk a little bit about where that came from how did they get started who's funding it you're right so a few of us in the neighborhood and who are town media members are aware of the c p a process and the c p a is the community preservation act and actually one point five percent of our tax dollars are set aside for community preservation and put in the community preservation fund and then there's an opportunity for community members to apply for those funds to do several things one is historical renovations and work and another is related to housing low income housing and then a rd area is recreation so we applied for a grant in the recreation category and actually it was a interesting process because when we st put in the grant we asked for some simple things could we get new swings could we simply get new play quick meant and i think the amount we asked for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the c p c committee came back to us and said we would love for p q part to get more attention we would love to have that playground tree done but as friends of p q we don't have any landscapers on our team we don't have any engineers that can look at storm water runoff and so they suggested that the st step would be to do to hire a design firm to do a redesign of the park so the c b c requested that we ask for twenty five thousand dollars and that we call that phase one so currently we're in phase one we've hired a design firm to work with us and it has been an excellent experience and a great process and that is phase one and based on the design that they develop and what the community really wants we will go back this cycle and asked the c p a committee to allocate more funds for us to do the construction and public process involved with this now you talk about hiring a firm if i remember correctly it's the water field the design firm yeah that that so it's called playgrounds but you can't just choose them because you like playgrounds that they have done you go through a public building process so can mean allocated twenty five thousand dollars we wrote up what is called a request for proposal an p that says things in it like we need this design firm to have designed five playgrounds in the area and we need this design from to have one civil engineer and one landscape architect  bits come in and we take the lowest bid and from a qualified for so came in under that twenty five thousand dollars number they were the most qualified and that is how we chose them and we have an initial meeting we meet with them we talk about the project and then we've had several meetings with them both between me and head of d p w and the design firm and then we've had two public meetings to get input from the community that's great  let's set the planning aside for the minute and talk about the playground there well let's talk about the playground and specifically can you give me a visual image of what the playground is i walk over there with my puppy but my kid is long past the days of fusing a playground so the play there is fairly  fairly typical of playgrounds that were built around the same time it has one you call them a bay of swings for older kids those are normal you know laps wings with  rubber you know bar across and has for baby swings and edition into a handicap swing there's also a place structure which a single place structure that all kids play at ages one and a there is a standalone slyness and then there are favorite ice cream stand and bank that are there for imagine a play and those are very worn down but the kids still use it i see little girl standing there and little boy stood in there and say are primarily in neighborhood and then there are the places like joey's park or what i refer to as the spring park that are destination parks that draw from all over town and beyond yeah that's a really good question so p q is a neighborhood park and it's heavily used by those who live in the surrounding  area it is not currently what we call a destination park where families around belmont are coming to have birthday parties and bringing large groups of kids there the largest groups that come are  there are some local daycare and child care providers that will be there every morning and every afternoon with you know six thousand eight hundred and ten little little children that they will bring so it definitely serves purposes that the neighborhood means now some people only know p q as the soccer fields oh that's where i drop my kid off for soccer every week and along with those kids when they come for soccer come their families and those children play on the playground those parents walk the loop and in that sense it is used by many many people from the town who may not necessarily be involved in the p q renovation process but who will very much benefit from it and are you familiar with the history of the area at all before we talk about the future i seem to remember that there was a carnival or a circus that used to come to the p q park so it's very interesting and so as we've been working on the project i did not initially kno much at all about the history and as we've been working on the project some people have come out of the woodwork and told us different things there is a neighbor that lives right next to the bartlett entrance there they have three generations living there and the youngest children who are there now will be the th generation in that house and so talking to them there were many things in terms of there are spots where the recreation department used to have a little locker and the rec department would have counselors and teenagers out there in the summer and if you had children in the area you would just send them over to the park and there'd be someone to watch them and help them engage in you know different sports and activities during the summer days and hours  we also found out that the current play structure has been there for about twenty five years there's a woman named kathy ruane who helped design that she was on the right commission and she talked about the process and what happened in that case and in that case say this temperament minute and then we can get back in that case apparently some of the equipment was in disrepair and resting and the  were highway department came in and made it all it shiny new by putting the yellowish you know orange paint on it the same yellowish when you paint that we see marquis in the street i come to find out it has a lead paint on it so that was a quick red flag to parents and that's how the process started of meaning to redo p q park and then park was the st one redone and following that several other playgrounds oh that's great well let me tell you upfront that i am not a resident currently of the peaky park neighborhood but i have some very clear images of things that about the p q mouth yes i can tell you the origins of the peak you mount and we we were a little bit scared that there was a mountain there and what might be underneath it what they were trying to bury with the p q mountain come to find out that that was not the case that actually the ready firefighters had helped with installing the current plague women and when they were finished they had extra dirt and they left it there thinking oh maybe the kids kids run up and down all the time right it's a climbing structure for the little kids for the older kids it's a bike ramp that they can come off and come down and it's also the sandbox where kids play in the dirt right there so that that is definitely two features that we would like to keep not in their current manifestation but but they will be there for people to to enjoy so if people are worried about the peak amount going away we are definitely going to fill that need in the new place so let's talk about the future for a little bit because the purpose of this process is not simply to replace the plane quickmatch they're really to plan what the playground should be and what functions it should serve and how it best serves that  i correct in that that is right so we hired the design firm and their job is to take input from the community find out what the community wants and then in essence put that down on paper and so they will listen to a sale we want a bigger loop or we want more more make believe player we want it to look more natural can we can we have it you know how would structures and so their job is to take what the community wants and then respond and put it down on paper so it's not as if we're hiring it to design firm they're going to go off they're going to put all sorts of bells and whistles in p q park and say oh everybody's going to love this and this is exactly what we've done it other parks instead of that they listen to the community they come back to the community we have several iterations of going back and forth and the end design will be able to say it's not just what i want it's not just what the a butter's want it's not just what the soccer association wants this is what the community wants and one of the things that  i think that i've heard in a community meeting is the need to divide the young kids the young young kids from the older kids and i'm not sure how i'm defining better it seems like mixing ten and twelve year olds with one and two year olds is a bad idea yes so they're actually standards  recommendations about current playground installations and they are certain things like how much space you need to have in the front and back with swing for for safety but you do separate the toddlers from the school age children and so for the toddlers there will be stepping stones and baby swings and a little p q mound that they can climb up and then use a little slide and go down so that's what the toddlers will have the school age children will have a much bigger structure that has elements you would think of in playgrounds like monkey bars and  things to climb on one or two slides to go down some you would think that will engage the the older the older kids and then they'll be an area where  're separating out the play area and i'll be on the right if you can visualize it and then on the left that's where we're going to have the big p q mound so it'll be you know a hill that is substantial enough for those older kids to ride their bikes over without disturbing you know that the two and three year olds who are on their little hill with their little slide so will actually have to peek you males one for the younger one for the older and s one thing we didn't talk about is all the other uses of the park so there's definitely the playground area that's used by the children there's certainly lots of dog owners who are out there you see them every morning after school drop off i walk past and there's dog owners out there you know enjoying socializing time and exercise for their dogs so that's a large user group the soccer association is a large user group i've seen baseball i've seen lacrosse i've seen basketball i've even seen some caulfield on occasion so and then we have the tennis courts which are heavily used so there are all those uses that it that it has and in terms of the playground side we really want it to be intergenerational and so that's why we're now going to take everything that was happening on that one little loop and make two or three you know those who might be walking on it and then those who might be speeding around on their bikes or those who maybe just learning to use a scooter will have three separate areas for those purposes and used to talk about it being intergenerational i have two questions about that i guess one is it seems like in a playground such as this the community might be well served if there is simply a place for someone like me a person in their sixty's to go and sit at a picnic table or at a bench and read a book or a newspaper yet those are called passive areas of the park so we'll have the the playground areas which are meant for very active play and then you have passive areas which are where we've put in lots of planning for present vege vegetation lots of trees and shrubs and there would be picnic tables and cd and shade so that the part can be used by all different all different ages and the other thing when i say intergenerational one big piece of this is we want  park that will last we want long jeopardy we want things that are resistant to wear and tear and vandalism that can be easily kept up the last playground you know had to last for twenty or twenty five years and now we see you know that it really does need to be replaced and we would like the new playground to last for at least twenty or twenty five years if not more that's great one thing that you just mentioned if this is in the playground often gets muddy because the creek runs under the playground but the fact that the creek is there at all means that it is that the land is such that the water runs down there correctly so you would asked is it a three season park is four season park so in the forty's in the winter it will occasionally see cross country skiing the dogs are still out plain but the playground season park maybe not the day after the blizzard but you know if if there are you know four or six inches of snow we'd still like the kids to be out there and be able to play and there are two ways that that's being addressed so first of all there will be some drainage there will be more drains at the park at low points so that water can be collected there so it's not just standing water so that standing water can't freeze and then there will also be a small rain garden and a rain garden is the area where you put trees and plants that do well with lots of water and that will be at the low point as well where water be collected in that area and then it will be there's a guideline where you know within seventy two hours it will have you know filtered into the ground so we're using those two strategies to help make the park is dry during the winter and that's one thing that this design group that we've hired is really has a lot of expertise so we can be confident that the drainage that they put in will will last and speaking of vegetation and at the risk of taking a trip down memory lane here and we're starting to run a little short of time so one more question i seem to remember that there used to be a whole line of trees that lined the playground that over the years have come down one by one i associate parks and playgrounds and trees together  are there plants yes so you're correct there used to be a line of trees and i it's before my time but i haven't seen a picture but i've heard many people talk about the line of trees and those will be replaced that will be a line of trees along the edge of the plague or the area somewhat separating the playground area from the soccer area and in addition to that there will be trees planted elsewhere to  shade and you know really to make it not just a you know go to the park and play on the playground but an area for everyone to enjoy those trees may take a few years  but they're going to make sure that they are wind resistant drought resistant you know put in trees that can really thrive i hear that the other ones came down in you know in bad winter storms and such thank you julie we're out of time so just very briefly if someone wants to have input into the renovation and redesign of the playground how do they get their voice heard so as i mentioned before to stay updated you can join the facebook group to get involved join the google group and any questions can come to friends of people park at yale dot com we also have our  rd and final public meeting coming up on thursday november rd at the butler school at seven pm and that's the rd and final meeting and the design firm will take input but if people have not been able to attend the means they should not worry that they didn't get to have a say because we've really reached out to different groups to the council on aging and to the you know toddler groups in the area and parents of all different ages in the soccer association so we're pretty confident that we've hit all our bases and those people who would like to say that that demographic has been represented thank you very much julie it's been great and i wish you absolutely the best of luck with look forward to having a conversation with you after it's all done to see if it matches your aspirations listen to this podcast by accessing it online and media dot org or by accessing it online at wicked local belmont dot com you can also download us from i tunes by searching for the b m c podcast network i would encourage our listeners both to stay tuned to the belmont media center and to read the weekly bama citizen herald for continuing information about events going on throughout the town  much i'm roger colton your host of community conversations thank you again for listening i will talk with you again in two weeks