Open Space II: King Street Playground

I was mistaken in my most recent post about the King Street Playground.

Two recent visits showed the George Robert White Play Space to be locked at night and, during the day, to be open, peaceful, clean, and picked up.

Much less than the usual amount of end-of-winter, wind-blown urban trash was present. There were two make-shift bird feeders, unsurprisingly full to the brim, given the recent deluges.

Pawing around in Google produced a brochure from Native Landscapes who designed the rehabilitation of the play space. Their plan for the play space is on page 13 of this link [4.2 MB pdf].

What I had remembered as, and probably was, part of the playground apparently has been conveyed to the ISB.

Regrettably the George Robert White Fund only owned the parcel at the corner of Roxbury and King streets.

This little park contains a well-proportioned shallow sunken pool. Perhaps in better days it was an infant wading pool or contained a fountain.

Before the mosque was built it was an quietly exquisite place to sit unmolested, contemplating the huge willow tree that graced the parcel that now bears the mosque, with the bustle of Roxbury Crossing in the background. One can see the modern granite bollards in the picture above.

The picture to the right shows the corridor of land from the mosque's parking lot to Roxbury Street.

It suffers in comparison from other disused lots in the neighborhood only in that it has been disturbed more recently and nature has had less time to reclaim it.

Given a couple of more years of passive neglect, it will blend right in with the rest of the disused lots.

Urban Amenities: Open Space I

One of the best things about Fort Hill—besides being located on a hill in view of Dorchester Bay—is its parks and open space. Of all the close-in neighborhoods of Boston, Highland Park seems to have the highest ratio of open space.

This open space consists of city parks, a State Park, designated Urban Wilds, community gardens, the vestigal Roxbury Common at the First Church, playgrounds and playing fields, and, of course, the numerous unimproved lots, the dubious legacy of the plague of arson in the 1970s and '80s.

One city park, Clarence "Jeep" Jones Park, located at the bluff on Malcolm X Boulevard, has been improved at least twice since the '70s.

In the sweetheart deal conveying the 88,000 sq ft parcel at 100 Malcolm X Boulevard to the Islamic Society of Boston, ISB was to have maintained the park, and the King Street Playground, for a period of ten years until 2013.

The ISB fell on hard fund-raising times and has been just able to complete phase 1 of its planned mosque and cultural center. It has so far failed to fulfill its obligations for maintenance of Jeep Jones and the King Street Playground.

The Boston Parks and Recreation 2008 Annual Report [1.3MB pdf] contains a very brief notice of a $885K state grant for capital reconstruction of Jeep Jones and the Ripley Playground.

For its second improvement, crews have been busy at Jeep Jones during the winter. It seems the park will open soon with new fences, planting, and hardscape. The basketball courts are gone, but the new design invitingly opens onto John Eliot Square.

However, the King Street playground and the corridor of ISB-owned land at Roxbury Street remain a wasteland.