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Pop’s Playground Ready for Revival in East Kensington


At the corner of Trenton Avenue and Hazzard Street in East Kensington lies a Frankenstein of a public space: Part playground, part dog park, part basketball court, part skatepark, Pop’s Playground is now set to be included in a city-wide green initiative program headed by the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD). The poorly lit, eyesore of a park is also becoming the focal point of revived activism by a new group of concerned community members living in the surrounding area.

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Representatives from the PWD spoke in front of community members at Cione Rec last week to outline their plans for Pop’s. Maggie Dunn from the PWD told The Spirit that the park, which is located less than a mile from the Delaware River, is a great location for a stormwater project, which will be part of PWD’s Green City, Clean Waters plan to reduce stormwater pollution currently entering the city’s combined sewer system through the use of green infrastructure. The project will help solve the problem of stormwater runoff, which is when water does not soak into the ground after a rainfall. Hard and impervious surfaces, like streets and sidewalks, don’t allow for the absorption of rain and the precipitation travels into the river carrying pollutants with it. Adding trees and plants to a space in order to absorb rainfall and filter pollutants in an urban setting will help replicate a natural water cycle.

 

The Water Department’s plan for Pop’s Playground proposes two subsurface water basins, rain gardens, a new basketball court, a dog park, green inlets and new trees. “We are really subject to gravity when choosing these locations,” Dunn said. “Luckily for us, Pop’s is in a natural basin where water flows to already.”

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Luke Demi, a new East Kensington homeowner, lives on 2500 block of Collins Street, right across from Pop’s. He attended the PWD meeting at Cione after hearing about it through the grapevine and wanting to get involved to help make the park “a little nicer.”

“I was very impressed by PWD’s handling of the issues,” Demi said. “They were very receptive to resident’s suggestions and really took their time allowing us to ask questions and work through a lot the details. I was also not expecting there to be so much energy surrounding the meeting. You could really tell that the entire neighborhood was excited to revive the park.”

There had be a prior push by neighbors to improve the park a few years back, but that initiative fell to the wayside. After hearing what the PWD had to say, Demi and a group of other community members got together to see how they could do their part in revitalizing the space. They gathered at the park to discuss what the right course of action should be. Over the weekend, they reconvened at the park once again and held a small clean up.

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“Starting a nonprofit is just one of the options we’re considering,” Demi said. “We’re having our first Friends of Pop’s meeting next Tuesday, November 10th at Cione Rec at 7PM, where we’re going to sit down and try to decide what our best course of action is. We, as a community, need to decide how far we want to go with this project.”

“Do we just want the park safe? Just clean? Maybe new and renovated equipment? What if we decide we want to start holding community events? There’s plenty of space at the basketball court, what if we used them for a flea market? What if we found a way to fit in a community garden?” Demi added. “Without founding a nonprofit, we can’t do the second half of that list — we have no way of running programs or renovating sections. Either way, we want to move fast.”

The new Friends of Pop’s have around a year before PWD breaks ground on their project. The group is hoping that start of the stormwater project coincides with an entire park makeover and not just the sections the PWD want to fit more water into.

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“I think PWD’s planned improvements are a good first step. I like that they’re going to improve the dog park and refinish the basketball court, but they’ll also be taking away from the usable space with their proposed rain garden. Their improvements basically account to fixing about a third of the park, but with the park being in this bad of shape, how much of an impact will that actually have?”

The Friends of Pop’s are looking to catch the attention of the city, local representatives and new residents to ensure that the space is able to fulfill its potential as a safe public space. And with seven new single family-homes set to be constructed on Hazzard Street across from the park, the desire to change this space from a dark and sketchy hangout and into a more inviting community space has never been more important.

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Want to get involved with the Friends of Pop’s? Come to the meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at Cione Rec (Aramingo and Lehigh) @ 7PM to join in the discussion on how to revive the Friends of Pop’s and clean the playground up.

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