The groundbreaking for a new, green playground at P.S. 306/M.S. 331 in the Tremont section of the Bronx took place on Tuesday, Oct. 5. New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), The Trust for Public Land, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., Council Member Vanessa L. Gibson, and Fordham University president, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., joined a diverse student body, teachers, and families for the occasion.

The state-of-the-art schoolyard, which will be open to the community during non-school hours, will serve more than 42,000 residents within a 10-minute walk of home. Newly designed green infrastructure will capture two million gallons of stormwater each year – reducing flooding and helping to improve the health of the nearby Harlem River.

Carter Strickland is vice-president of the Mid-Atlantic Region and New York State director for the Trust for Public Land, and said parks improve the general health and well-being of the communities they serve. “[This] is why The Trust for Public Land is committed to ensuring that everyone, no matter where they live in New York, has access to a public park within a 10-minute walk of home,” he said. “Once complete, this playground will bring more than 42,000 Tremont residents of all ages within a ten minute walk of the park, giving them a chance to connect, exercise, and have fun together.”

DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said the agency was proud to join with The Trust for Public Land, elected officials and the school communities of P.S. 306/M.S. 331 to celebrate the groundbreaking. “The green infrastructure elements will be designed to absorb an estimated two million gallons of stormwater annually, which will ease pressure on the neighborhood’s sewers and help to reduce any untreated water from entering the Harlem River,” he said. “To date, DEP has constructed 23 green playgrounds with The Trust for Public Land and we are excited to have another 40 in development. We look forward to many more groundbreakings to come.”

Meanwhile, associate dean at Fordham University Graduate School of Education, Anita Vazquez Batisti, Ph.D., said Fordham’s Community School staff is dedicated to providing services and support to all members of the Bronx School of Young Leaders community, enabling all students to learn and achieve at higher levels. “Jesuit education is steeped in the notion of ‘cura personalis,’ or care for the entire person as an individual endowed with particular gifts and insights,” she said. “So too is our work. The new student-designed schoolyard, where students will exercise their bodies, stimulate their minds, and rejuvenate their spirits, is a perfect embodiment of that ethos.”

Scheduled to open in Fall 2024, the $2.2 million playground was designed by students from elementary school P.S. 306 and middle school M.S. 331, to reflect their neighborhood’s unique identity, culture, and character. Playground features will include a full basketball court, a volleyball court, an outdoor classroom, game tables, a gazebo, play equipment for younger children, fitness equipment for older students and community members, benches, a running track, and a turf field for soccer and football.

The new P.S. 306/M.S. 331 playground, formerly plagued with sinkholes that periodically flooded during rainstorms, will also feature green infrastructure elements such as shade trees, plantings, permeable pavers, and a synthetic turf field that will capture 2 million gallons of rainwater a year. These features will better manage stormwater runoff that can flood streets and overwhelm sewer systems, as well as reduce sewer overflows and protect the Harlem River watershed.

The P.S. 306/M.S. 331 playground will be built by The Trust for Public, in partnership with the DEP, The School Construction Authority and the Department of Education. In addition to serving students, once completed, the new schoolyard will reopen to the public during after school hours between 8 a.m. and dusk when school programs are not in session, providing opportunities for both children and adults to enjoy a place for exercise, relaxation, and socializing with neighbors.

According to The Trust for Public Land, since 1996, working with the City, the Trust’s work on New York City playgrounds has designed and/or built more than 200 school and community playgrounds across the five boroughs. Overall, it has added more than 160 acres of additional playground space across the five boroughs, serving more than 4.5 million people who live within a 10-minute walk of one of the sites.

Trust officials said its playground program employs participatory design principles, involving students to help them gain valuable knowledge and life skills like budgeting, negotiation, and planning. In addition to being a fun, recreational space, the playground at Tremont will function as an outdoor classroom for students to explore nature, learn about environmental science, and take part in physical education and after-school activities.

Green infrastructure design elements are a hallmark of the Trust’s playground work. Trust officials said these features help to improve New York City’s resistance to major storms by reducing storm water runoff that can flood streets and overwhelm sewer systems, allowing untreated water to end up in rivers and bays. Each playground absorbs hundreds of thousands of gallons of water annually and similar playgrounds are being designed in the Flushing and Jamaica Bay watersheds.

The P.S. 306/M.S. 331 playground is made possible through a partnership with the DEP, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York City School Construction Authority, as well as through funding from Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., and District 14 Council Member Fernando Cabrera.

Since we published this story, one resident commented, saying, “Plastic synthetic-turf and tire waste are not child-friendly ‘green-infrastructure!’ This advertising PR takes ‘greenwashing’ to a whole new horrific and cynical level, especially in using children as fronts for child and environment-abusive synthetic plastic and rubber surfacing, when they will actually be the victims of the hotter-than-asphalt heat, injuries and toxins.”

The reader continued, “And apparently this is just one of many such toxic, fake, ‘green Infrastructure’ super-heat-island-creating play projects being put in place by the NYC DEP and The Trust for Public Land?? It’s the underground storage that will collect the water from the field – just like a parking lot with underground storage! Grass fields and natural surface playgrounds can and often are combined with underground storage as well, and are ACTUAL ‘green Infrastructure,’ which filter water and cool and oxygenate the air. Synthetic turf fields and rubber playground surfacing do the exact opposite and are abuses of children and the environment.”

We reached out to the DEP for comment and they responded, saying, “That comment is full of inaccuracies but it misses the most important point; these are school playgrounds that are used all day by the students.” The DEP official continued, “And then, because they are Trust for Public Land playgrounds too, they are open at night and on the weekends for the public. So, they are very heavily used and experience informs us that natural grass does not hold up under those circumstances. The grass dies, the soil becomes compacted and so hard that it will not allow water to drain and can hurt folks who may fall on it.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.