Run Down Rodney Park to be Spruced Up Next Year
April, 8 2011 • BROOKLYN PAPER
By Aaron Short
The city will overhaul Rodney Park, a decrepit Williamsburg playground next to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway near Rodney Street, giving kids a sparkling $450,000 play area.
The skinny five-block-long park has abutted Brooklyn's scar-like expressway since both were built in 1952, and it's been a popular place for after-school games and a hot street basketball league.
But residents have decried the neighborhood's lack of greenery for years - and are still lobbying to eventually put a platform over the expressway, a multi-million-dollar plan that would unite playgrounds on Marcy Avenue and Rodney Street.
The restoration of Rodney Park, which will begin next year, is not part of that larger effort, but it is nonetheless welcome, said Community Board member 1 Esteban Duran.
"This redesign is hopefully part of a larger commitment by the city for parks projects such as decking the BQE," said Duran.
The playground will feature a labyrinth play area, new benches and chairs for seniors, and a drum circle for the neighborhood's percussionists.
The redesign's main feature is a five-foot "landscaped buffer" which will give seniors a shaded seating area to relax and enjoy a "mini-urban oasis," said North Brooklyn Parks coordinator Stephanie Thayer.
It's also environmentally friendly.
"We're going from a majority of the park with pavement to a majority of the park as permeable," said Thayer. "We'll retain the stormwater for plants instead of letting it run off into the sewers."
Rodney Park is named after Caesar Rodney, a legendary Revolutionary War general and post-Independence political leader from Delaware. There is also a school named after him in Borough Park. He has no known connection to Brooklyn, though he was opposed to slavery.
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