Kids’ Easter Event Highlights Quest To Save Kensington Playground

Friends of Kensington Playground and Upon This Rock Ministries distributed 45 Easter baskets and 30 bags filled of canned goods to Dwight residents on Saturday.

The giveaway was a part of Friends of Kensington Playground’s ongoing mission to save the pocket park on Kensington after the city sold the property to The Community Builders, INC. (TCB) to build affordable housing.

Friends of Kensington Park has collected over 200 signatures to a petition to save the playground. It has also collected over $7,000 through a GoFundMe campaign that will pay for filing a lawsuit against the city to stop the sale of the park to TCB.

Saturday’s giveaway was a part of the ongoing movement to shine light on how the space is essentially Dwight’s community green.

Olivia Martson, organizer of the event, said the team is proposing to the court that TCB build affordable housing in another location to save the park. The team of volunteers are now working with an architect to take TCB’s drawings of the buildings and find alternative locations of where the units can be placed while also proving to the city why the park enriches the community.

Kensington Playground is located between Chapel Street and Edgewood Avenue, a block from Yale New Haven Hospital’s St. Raphael Campus, in the midst of the Kensington Square subsidized-housing development. The space was originally a farm owned by horticulturist Charles Dickerman from 1850 to 1920. Families and local churches have made more use of the space throughout the Covid-19 pandemic than in the past.

“It’s almost like the park is becoming what it was originally,” Martson said. ​“In the ​‘60s during urban renewal, pretty much all of this was torn down. This is a story that needs to be told, and I think that we can find another alternative space for TCB. We were disappointed in Mayor [Justin] Elicker because we tried to get a meeting with him and the developer to have a mediation. He would not really support us.” (Elicker said the deal was in place before he was mayor; supporters say it provided needed affordable housing for the neighborhood.)

“The members of this community think that building affordable housing at the expense of the park is not acceptable,” said Victoria Vebell, another organizer of Friends of Kensington Playground. ​“We are not against affordable housing. People use this park! We’re trying to revitalize the park and use these events to show what a great place it is.”

Josh Randall, a first year phD student at Yale and Dwight resident, said losing the park could also have an impact on the environment.

Randall studied the age and size of the trees in the park to understand what kind of carbon is stored in the space.

“With the new addition of the buildings, it would still take about 30 years to replace how much carbon is stored here right now in this little space,” Randall said. ​“Which is really important, because this neighborhood as a whole has been traditionally redlined since the 1920s. Having trees here to modulate the temperatures to provide water, shade, and biodiversity are really all important. The loss of the area is going to be felt by the neighbors and the city at large.”

The pastor of Upon This Rock Ministries, Valerie Washington (pictured above on the left), grew up in the Dwight neighborhood with her sister, Christine Perry (pictured on far left). Washington said that the children need a safe place to play.

“We grew up in this park as kids. That’s important. If this park closes, the kids will stay in the house and that’s not healthy for the parents either because now the parents have to come up with something to entertain their children,” Washington said. ​“That can become very frustrating.”

Kensington Park has a history of crime and drugs, which had left the space empty and often avoided. Perry said the idea is to bring back a safe community for the children and the families.

“When we were growing up here we could go to the park safely,” Park said. ​“Now, you can’t just let your children out, but we’re out here networking for the good. What would it be like for the children if they don’t have anywhere positive to go? Social skills and learning how to play with others from different cultures has a lot to do with the development of children.”

Top neighborhood cop Lt. John Healy (pictured above) was praised by many at the event for revamping Kensington Park and making it a place for families to attend rather than being overrun by drugs. Healy said the park has been improved over the past four years with partnerships made in the community and by the police department.

“When I first took over, there were hundreds of graffiti tags and trash. We worked with LCI [Livable City Initiative] and public works, people in the community, and alders to get it cleaned up,” Healy said. ​“Parks are always great for the kids. The more things that we have for them to be occupied in a healthy way is obviously beneficial for everyone.”

Children of all different ages and ethnicities came to grab an Easter basket.

Siblings Amari Watson (10), Cam Carter (14), Devon Carter (13), Winter Carter (5), and Persephone Velez (12) each grabbed a basket and wrote a reason on the Friends of Kensington Playground’s banner of why they want the park to stay. The siblings live two houses down from the park.

“We were really mad because we like playing here a lot,” Cam said.

“We play football here,” Watson added. ​“We also play in the sprinklers and stuff.”

Mustapha Badr has lived in the neighborhood for five years with his four children. He said that the park is a better view than buildings.

“This space for the kids to play is closer to home,” Badr said. ​“It’s not good for our neighborhood and kids for the park to be replaced.”

Sydney and Jamary Williams, mother and son, have been longtime residents of Kensington Square. Sydney said that she has seen the park look rundown, and now it’s returning to how it once was.

“They have to let people stop coming from other areas and tear up here for us,” Williams said. ​“We used to come to the park all of the time but after a few years, we stopped coming because there was too much going on. There’s a lot of things that I don’t want to bring my son up around.”

Friends of Kensington Playground has further goals to enhance the park by building additional playground equipment. Juan McFadden, who lives across the street from the playground, said he thinks that money should be invested by the city to reconstruct the area.

“It doesn’t actually even look like a park,” McFadden said. ​“The splash pad doesn’t even work. They should put up a playground. A basketball court, maybe. Make it look like all of the other parks in New Haven. It would help the children because there’s nowhere else really to play out here. On top of that, there’s a lot of crime and drugs out here.”

Towards the end of the event, Elm Vineyard Church members volunteered in a park cleanup. Tyrese Ford and Shirley Kuang both said that they support saving the park.

“We use this space to worship. People come to this space to play. This space offers so many opportunities,” Ford said. ​“If the community members want to keep this green space then I support them 100 percent.”

“It’s an interesting question of whether or not if the community can keep the park,” Kuang said, ​“Because I feel like we wouldn’t ask that question if this park was in a different area. I feel like the people who live here obviously think this space is important so I think their perspective and voice are most important.”

Friends of Kensington Park will be holding a bike event on April 17 on the playground. Visit their website for more information on the mission.