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Roslindale park would get major playground revamp
By adamg on Mon, 03/09/2015 - 9:58am
City parks officials and a design firm last week showed off renovation plans for the Fallon Field playground that would include Roslindale's first playground spray deck and a "secret garden" in a layout that spreads across two levels on the park's hillside.
Roslindale Wants to Play has more details on the proposal and some thoughts on making it even better.
The site is the work of Roslindale parents who persuaded Mayor Walsh to speed up work by a year on the plans after they showed Roslindale was relatively bereft of playgrounds compared to other neighborhoods.
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Comments
wow
The artist's rendering even includes mounds of dirty snow!
Oh good
I'm not the only one to misinterpret the artist's boulder vision.
Very well done.
Very well done.
Is Everyone Doing The "Hands Up" To Avoid Being Shot By Police?
They're throwing up their hands
in awe at the mountain range in Roslindale that they'd never noticed until that moment.
Roslindale alps
I believe that's Metropolitan Hill on the left, Grew Hill in the middle and Bellevue Hill on the right :-).
Also a Roslindale building boom
If those kids turn around they'll see some mysterious new buildings, too.
That looks like
Its going to be a great skate spot.
Happy!!!!
I love my neighborhood!!! I've been living across from this park since 2005 and been taking my son here since he was 2 in 2008. Now that he is 8yrs old he kind of out grew the park(enjoys the basketball, tennis and hockey courts)but adding a spray deck would be a wonderful thing!!! Because of them adding a spray deck, I know this will attract more people, if so I just hope they respect the park as much as us regulars do!!!
Great work by the neighbors
Great work by the neighbors who have been pushing this and especially the ones leading the charge from Roslindale Wants to Play. A great example of what organizing can do. I also recall some naysayers on when they first brought forward their study, you can go back and see it in the prior posts. Kudos to the organizers and thank you to the city for doing this.
Cool but...
Can someone with more knowledge of this explain the thoughts behind reducing the amount of swings, which are the most popular item at the current one, and the elimination of the tall play structures? Seems like there is more running around space but less climbing and clambering equipment. It looks like it's all a toddler playground now.
Swings
These same points came up at the community meetings. If you look at the feedback captured by the Parks Department, you'll see these concerns as the first two items listed in the section labeled "PLAY". So far the designers have been pretty good about responding to community feedback, so the final design may well include more swings and height/risk. And please send your feedback to the parks department!
The link above from
The link above from Roslindale Wants to Play addresses most of your points. Feedback from residents at the recent meeting sought a taller and more iconic climbing structure so hopefully that can be incorporated into the final design. The design is close to set but not finalized, and the engineers need the snow to melt before they can conduct a survey as well. Not sure about the swing reduction, there are two swing structures anticipated. Some of the running around space you see if required as buffer between the various structures and objects. The splash area has wide support but with it comes significant cost in a finite budget which will result in not everything people want unfortunately.
Minor thing but kinda cool: there will be cafe-type tables with chess and checkers layouts for people to play if they want, and also a stone or concrete ping pong table.
Thanks
for the updates from both of you.
My gold standard is the playground at the Franklin Park Zoo, which has lots of height and structures. A splash area is really only good for two months of the year while the playground is used 8-9 months a year so I'm not a huge fan of that vs. more useful space.
Any money being spent in Roslindale is certainly welcome so I'm not down on this overall just curious about the details.
So
We're going to be stuck with the same number of playgrounds as before?
I thought that was the point of the group advocating for more playspace.
Haven't seen the plans in detail. After visiting Billings last fall, I'd love to see an upgrade. I just hope they don't mess with what works.
The re-design for Fallon
The re-design for Fallon substantially increases the playground's footprint and gets Roslindale a splash feature. That's a good start. Healey Field's playground is also going to have a renovation done. Importantly, the Parks Department is exploring other places to put playgrounds in the neighborhood but that's going to take time.
are those the catskills...
in the background? and what's with all the ninjas...?
Not sure why they would put
Not sure why they would put huge rocks in the middle of a playground with small children. They also did this at Billings Field in West Roxbury. My kids have now outgrown playgrounds but I thought it was strange when I saw them at Billings........Otherwise, finally a great playground in a great neighborhood that I grew up in!