By Liz Tung
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS -- In the spring of 2006 a big hubbub surrounded Cadman Plaza Park over a proposal to cover the south side of the park in artificial turf. Proponents argued that because so many athletic teams used the field, any grass that was planted would just get stomped away, reverting the area to what people already called the “Dust Bowl.�

Opponents countered that the artificial turf would both raise the ground temperature and turn the lawn into a field dedicated to athletic use only.

Three years later the turf has transformed the “Dust Bowl� into a prized space for athletes and frolickers alike — but the battle of the field wears on. There’s now a turf war, as athletes and new mothers scuffle over the cleanest, most even and best-kept grounds the park has to offer.

For a local mother who wished to remain anonymous, the issue came to a head when her daughter was recently hit “hard, in the upper back� by an errant soccer ball. “We were sitting about 20 feet north of their goal posts after they told the girls that they had to move out of the way of their game,� she wrote in an e-mail. “The girls moved and someone still got hurt.�

The mother was so incensed that she wrote e-mails to Borough President Marty Markowitz and the local community board complaining about the soccer games that she says take place “seven days a week, from morning to night.� After praising the renovation of the park, saying that the new field has provided “one of the very few green spaces in the area,� the mother went on to write, “It’s gotten to the point where it’s no longer safe to take your children to the park because of the risk of injury from a fast moving ball or player ramming into your child.�

According to representatives from the Brooklyn Heights Association and local community board, this mother is not alone. Judy Stanton, executive director of the Heights Association, said they have received multiple complaints from local residents and parents of small children who found the south side of the park overrun with soccer players. “Little kids just want to run around; it’s free space,� she said. “And parents are worried they might get kicked by somebody or hit by a hard ball.�

Stanton said many of these parents are also hesitant to move to the north side of the park (on the other side of the Brooklyn War Memorial) because the area is bumpy and popular with dog-owners who don’t always pick up after their pets. “It’s often not as sunny behind the war memorial and kids who want to flop down might it a rock. [That area] is not designed for tumbling.�

Stanton locates both the source of and solution to this problem with the Parks Department, which owns and is responsible for the upkeep of Cadman. “The Parks Department decided the park was to be shared among multiple users and they expect everyone who uses it to get along and make room for each other. They purposely did not create grounds like in Prospect Park for organized activities.�

Irene Janner, a member of the local community board Parks Committee who has gotten her own earfuls of complaints, points out that Parks has limitations of its own. First of all, she said, soccer and other sports teams don’t require permits for their games, meaning that there’s no real way to regulate them.

Secondly, she speculates that Parks is reluctant to get involved because they don’t want to get entangled in community politics. Each faction in the debate has a stake in the neighborhood, from young mothers to parents of Saint Ann’s kids (who, during the school year, use the park in large numbers) to the mostly young men who stake out the south field for baseball or soccer.

Even if Parks did have the desire to mediate the situation, Janner says they don’t have the manpower to do so. Not only is there only one Parks supervisor for all of District 2, which covers a large expanse of Brooklyn, but the department has no enforcement agents to carry out any rules that might be drawn up regarding time- and space-sharing. Moreover, because the turf is not officially an athletic field, Parks says it has no means for making rules about organized sports because “supposedly that doesn’t happen.�

For these reasons, Janner says that “there is no resolution in sight,� but she hopes that the re-opening of the nearby Walt Whitman Park in three years will take some of the pressure off Cadman.

Nevertheless, not all young parents have a problem with the way Cadman’s south field is being used. Of an anecdotal sampling taken Monday afternoon on the field (two caretakers and four mothers, all of infants or toddlers), none of the women interviewed seemed to consider the soccer games an overwhelming problem, and none agreed that the games take place all day, every day.

“People should be allowed to play,� said Lynette Jadoobir, a caretaker who works in the neighborhood and comes to the park frequently. “Teens want to have fun too. If we really object, we can move to the smaller park, or use the grass when it’s quiet like now... It’s an open park, you know?�

A young mothers’ group, which meets once a week on the field, expressed similar sentiments. “There’s not a lot of playing space in this area for sports. So we can take them to other parks,� said Jaime Pessin, who lives in DUMBO and is the mother of an infant. “It’s just the nature of public space; it’s the difference between going to your backyard and going to a park.�

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