There are big plans for a little Frankford park.
Members of the Frankford Parks Group on July 30 discussed improvements to the Hedge Street rec center, a small facility at Orthodox and Hedge streets.
Jason Dawkins, an aide to City Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez (D-7th dist.), said the councilwoman will provide more than $110,000 from her capital budget to pay for demolition and removal of the old basketball court and other paving as well as building up the small park.
Plans call for playground equipment for children, adult fitness equipment, new paving and tree plantings. A skateboard park is planned for the area that is now a basketball court. Old-timers may recall when that part of the facility was a pool.
The mural that now covers two walls has been so defaced by graffiti that it will be painted over, Dawkins said.
The all-volunteer group, which formed a few years ago with the goal of revitalizing some small long-neglected neighborhood “pocket parks,” previously had put much of its efforts into improving Wilmot Park at Mulberry and Meadow streets and a community garden at Wilmot and Tackawanna.
At last week’s meeting at the Frankford Community Development Corporation headquarters on Griscom Street, parks group members looked over the budget for the Hedge Street improvements with an eye to cutting some expenditures and moving the money to other parts of the project.
Patricia Sills is trying to make arrangements to get a couple of truckloads of topsoil to cover up and kill the undisciplined weeds that cover the part of the park that fronts onto Orthodox Street.
Also, members said they wanted to add lights to the park, which is now dark at night.
But what the parks group really needs is volunteers, Sills said.
The parks group meets at CDC headquarters, 4900 Griscom St., the last Tuesday of the month. ••
