This is a beautiful playground that is in an absolutely horrible location.
It’s a total waste of funding to have built this playground here, and maintaining it will take resources away from other parks that better serve the community.
The land next to the BQE is an asthma-inducing hell-hole that would have better served the community as a stand of trees, a bit of open space with minimal maintenance costs. It’s a shameful waste of resources that everyone involved in this project should feel bad about, but no doubt they have patted themselves on the back bragging how they’ve given the community something really important. All they have done is ensured another generation endures choking diesel soot.
This is such a marginalized location, it’s not even used by skateboarders despite a huge skate park.
The equipment here is absolutely beautiful. It's brand new and laid out in a way that is fun and easy. The splash pad is beautiful too with lots of different water jets. Even with the water running though, the hum of heavy traffic driving on the BQE on ramp and the Kosciuszko Bridge is overwhelming.
We played here for a few minutes, and unsurprisingly were the only child in the playground.
Getting here is a game of frogger. It requires crossing a truck route with large heavy trucks, and lots of angry drivers stuck at red lights. The surrounding streets have terrible sidewalks covered in broken glass and huge gaps, plus lots of cars using the sidewalk as a parking lot.
We'll probably never be coming back here.
The city spent $12m renovating this playground in the middle of a toxic industrial park. And its dead center in a superfund site.
This park was first created in 1924, and named for Sergeant William Dougherty, a World War II veteran and Purple Heart recipient.