Comparing Peekskill’s 191-acre Depew Park to a house with separate “rooms” — fields, courts, trails,– an outside consultant suggested ways to unify the city’s natural treasure at a community meeting last week.

On Tuesday July 9 at the Neighborhood Center, the City of Peekskill, with representatives from New City Parks and Saratoga Associates, presented suggestions for a re-imagined park. It was also the opportunity to hear from residents on their vision for a revitalized Depew Park.

Approximately two dozen people were in attendance, including residents, city staff, and New City Parks and Saratoga Associates personnel. Attendees were led through a comprehensive presentation by landscape architect Alison Yovine, of Saratoga Associates, followed by an interactive workshop.

Who are New City Parks and Saratoga Associates?

New City Parks (NCP) is a nonprofit organization launched in 2019, to address inequities in park access. Led by the former Commissioner of New York State Parks, Rose Harvey, NCP works closely with small cities and their communities to create and restore parks where they are most needed.

According to their website, New City Parks provides all the services necessary to revitalize parks at no cost to the cities they work with. Their services include: partnering with mayors and local agencies, selecting pilot sites, engaging community members, providing pre-development, engineering, and design services, securing public dollars, and creating durable programming, and stewardship initiatives.

NCP has done work in Paterson, N.J., Passaic, N.J., Jersey City, N.J., Buffalo, N.Y., and Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Last month, Poughkeepsie held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the revitalized and upgraded pool house at Pulaski Park. Both NCP and Saratoga Associates are credited with bringing that project to fruition, as well as revitalizing Pershing Avenue Park and Malcolm X Park.

Harvey stated at last week’s community meeting that NCP is currently in seven cities, with Peekskill and Mount Vernon being the organization’s latest partners. As a relatively new organization, NCP partners with Saratoga Associates to help bring their expertise into projects.

Saratoga Associates is a landscape architectural firm, with over 50 years of experience. As stated on their website, the firm offers a variety of services and caters to all – public agencies, private developers, and nonprofit organizations. Saratoga Associates has worked on projects involving the planning and designing of college campuses, community planning and downtown development, parks and recreation, residential, visual assessment and scenic resource management, and waterfront revitalization. 

For nearly all their community projects, Saratoga Associates hold a kick-off meeting to establish a vision, goals, and objectives, like the one held with the City of Peekskill last week. 

Depew Park community meeting

City Manager Matt Alexander gave the opening remarks, speaking about how the city formed a partnership with New City Parks and provided background information on Depew Park renovations.

“We originally started talking to New City Parks about a year ago,” said Alexander. While the city and NCP did not partner initially, they found common ground later in the year.

“We came back around and said ‘This [Depew Park] might be a really good partnership for the city and New City Parks; to work together,” Alexander explained. In December 2023, the Common Council passed a resolution authorizing the city manager to sign a letter of understanding with NCP for assistance with improvements to Depew Park.

Alexander said the community meeting was a way for residents and staff to see what renovations the city had initially proposed in 2021, when it received a $1 million Dormitory Authority of State of New York (DASNY) grant, but then chose not to move forward with the ideas.  In 2021 the city had called for an overhaul of Depew Park and the installation of a mini soccer pitch at 701 Washington Street.

Alison Yovine of Saratoga Associates then spoke to the attendees; she began by showing photos of the existing conditions of Depew Park which was given to the city of Peekskill in 1908 by Chauncey Depew. 

Yovine presented the overall site plan, which featured vehicular wayfinding, pedestrian wayfinding, trailheads, parking areas, existing hiking trails, and proposed pedestrian circulation.

“I feel like the park is very much divided like rooms in a house. You have the pool, you have the courts, you have the park office, you have the fields, you have the picnic areas but the circulation between them is difficult. In a house, you would have hallways that would connect you to these rooms but here I feel like we’re missing some of those connections. Sometimes you actually almost have to exit the ‘house’ to come back into another room,” said Yovine. She added that she was at Depew Park recently and noted that the roads were confusing for vehicles and pedestrian safety was an issue.

“I think that we need to be looking at some circulation. Perhaps not today, perhaps not next year, but perhaps in five years – it’s something that could be addressed,” added Yovine.

One resident asked if the pink lines shown in the site plan would specifically be for pedestrian and bike access, Yvone answered “It would be a separation from the road, so it’s pretty much a sidewalk. There’s an existing sidewalk at the playground area, something like that.”

Yovine then discussed specific areas of focus, like the sports field and courts. 

“Honestly, I think it’s an area that can be easily improved. It has this new pickleball court, which really is stunning,” said Yovine.“The challenge is once you get to the pickleball courts it really is hard to travel and connect within there.” She identified other issues in that area, such as the ground being uneven, deteriorated courts, washed out maintenance driveway, and lack of seating.

Yovine then showed renderings  of what the sports field and court areas could look like. The renderings depicted the additions of a pavilion, picnic tables, and mini soccer pitch, as well as tennis court surface improvements, a resurfaced basketball court, and the removal of the existing clay tennis court to allow for improved walkability and new trees.

Saratoga Associates proposes that the existing basketball court include a mini soccer pitch. In the rendering shown above, the court is split in half – one side for basketball, one for soccer. But two alternative options were also presented. The first option called for a larger mini soccer pitch with a basketball overlay and the second proposed a multi-purpose court which would include two basketball courts overlaid with a mini pitch.

Yovine then discussed trails and fitness. She showed renderings that included creation of formal trailheads to access Blue Mountain Reservation, locations adjacent to parking, 18 holes of frisbee golf throughout the park, and the addition of a ‘discovery loop trail’ near Mother Nature’s Preschool. Improvements to trail markings are also being considered, said Yovine.

Yovine explained that the discovery loop trail would be a small trail for kids that could feature an outdoor classroom, plants with berries, and musical instruments.

The third focus area was arrival and circulation. Saratoga Associates proposes enhancing park entrances, improving vehicular circulation on Depew Court, and separating pedestrian circulation from vehicular traffic.

Yovine emphasized the need for upgrades and signage on the stone monuments at the various Depew Park entrances.”When you arrive, you don’t actually understand that you are in Depew Park, some [entrances] of them don’t have signs at all. You know you’re somewhere special, you just don’t exactly know where it is and you don’t necessarily know where to go.”

For example, Yovine suggested adding a signed entrance by the pool.“Right now there’s nothing there. It doesn’t really quite feel like an entrance to the park like the other entrances do.” 

Yovine also suggested making Depew Court, on the west side of the pool, a one way street that runs north. Currently the street is one way southward, which makes parking in a handicapped spot a challenge, as cars need to circle the park, come south on Depew Ct., and park on the left side of the street, further away from the pool. In addition, Saratoga Associates hopes to extend the road in front of the park’s office and make it a one-way southward.

Yovine’s final slide focused on  the playground. She revealed that the plan is to modernize the playground by replacing the mulch surfacing with a poured in place rubber (similar to Franklin Park).“You can actually roll your strollers on there, wheelchairs, you don’t have to worry about the kids getting all dirty. Nice clean surface, low maintenance,” said Yovine. 

While poured rubber may be more accessible to wheeled vehicles, recent research has shown that it poses a serious risk to children and the environment. The chemicals used as adhesives or pigments can be dangerous to children, even in trace amounts. And, these chemicals can leach into runoff water; even a small trace can have a negative impact on aquatic life and ecosystems. Extreme heat, as recently experienced in our area, causes these chemicals to be released in greater concentrations. Further, synthetic flooring, like poured rubber, absorbs heat quickly, resulting in a burn risk to children during the summer. For example, a parents’ group in Massachusetts compared the air temperature to the synthetic flooring on the playground: the air temperature was 75 degrees Fahrenheit – the poured in place flooring was 171 degrees Fahrenheit. Finally, poured in place flooring erodes relatively quickly, the debris can pose a choking hazard for children, and the city would need to replace the flooring regularly, resulting in additional maintenance costs.

Wood mulch, which is the current flooring on the Depew park playground, does not pose any of these risks to children or the environment. Yovine did not mention any of the risks of synthetic playground flooring in her presentation.

Community Feedback

After Yovine’s presentation, attendees were led into an adjacent room where boards depicted the different renderings she had discussed. Residents got a chance to see the proposed improvements up close, voice their opinions, and speak to other audience members. NCP and Saratoga Associates personnel went around asking people for comments and feedback.

Attendees were given stickers and asked to vote on what they deemed the highest priority for improving Depew Park. Those who participated all chose improved pedestrian/bicycle pathways by the end of the meeting.

One resident asked NCP personnel if they could look into addressing people smoking at Depew Park (Currently, smoking is prohibited at all city parks). The associate responded that although enforcement would fall onto the city and the police department, they hope to build a park that attracts enough people to where those who smoke would be deterred from doing so at the park.

Suggestions from other residents included: changing park office hours, the addition of a splash pad for kids with a shade structure, restricting vehicular access as much as possible, keeping mulch at the playground, improving trail signage, adding speed bumps, adding more garbage cans, adding a gate around the playground and trail maintenance.

Peekskill resident Elena Walker told the Herald she was unsatisfied that the large Hispanic population in Peekskill was not represented among those in attendance. She suggested to NCP personnel that they reach out to the Assumption Church, and hold a meeting to get feedback from Hispanic residents. They said they would take that into consideration.

Peekskill resident Sahar Moin is a landscape architect, who was present at the meeting. Her job requires her to attend and present at community/public meetings, although at the July 9 meeting, she was an observer. Moin said that while the city and Saratoga Associates got a few things right, there are others that, as a landscape architect, she would do differently.

“In general I think they did a good job of identifying that the pedestrian experience in the park is lacking at the moment. It does seem like they’re trying to at least create a more cohesive pedestrian network.”

“One thing that I feel needs a little more study and attention is the way cars access and use the park.” She suggests NCP needs to identify important parking spaces and look at how much they can limit or eliminate cars from the park.

To test it Moin says, “They could do a pilot program where they eliminate cars for a whole day or on the weekend – see how things go. My sense is that a lot of times people just assume that everybody needs all this parking, and then you take it away and people realize it’s not that bad and it’s much more pleasant to walk around and not have to worry about cars.” 

She added, “Maybe what I’m suggesting isn’t feasible but I didn’t see evidence of that kind of study being done.”

Another issue Moin brought up was the vehicular traffic on Depew Court, which is a one way street southward. Moin lives on Depew Court and routinely witnesses people going in the wrong direction. She noted that the signage is poor, and, as Yovine noted, the accessible parking is in front of the pool, resulting in wrong-way traffic. NCP and Saratoga associates hope to address this by making Depew Court a northward one way street. 

Moin was enthusiastic about the proposed changes to the sports field and court areas. “I think they are great – it’s not something that I would personally use but I recognize that this park, when improvements are done to it, will be able to give a diverse selection of things for people to do.”

Moin tells the Herald that she is against the playground’s mulch surfacing being replaced with a poured in place rubber. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think in this particular playground, the context is the woodland and they should stick with that.” 

“When I first moved here during the pandemic, they didn’t come in to refill the mulch, that was a safety concern but since then it hasn’t been like that. It’s just maintenance. One of the biggest things that the park needs to tackle is just better on-going maintenance.” 

Moin appreciates that New City Parks offers maintenance and stewardship programs for the parks they work on. “Maintenance is the biggest challenge that parks face. It’s great to have all these wonderful ideas about programs but if nobody is going to maintain them [the park], they won’t be used. I thought that was great and I hope to see that actually be followed through.” 

City applies for NY Swims grant

Although not a part of the Depew Park project, the city of Peekskill hopes to revitalize the outdated Veterans Memorial Pool.

At the July 15 Common Council meeting, council members unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the city manager to apply for the NY Swims grant. The city is seeking $6 million in grant funding. The grant requires a city match of $1.5 million.

In his memo to the council, City Manager Matt Alexander states that this grant would be “instrumental in transforming the pool into a state-of-the-art swimming facility that Peekskill residents can enjoy for years to come.” According to Alexander,  improvements to the pool could include the replacement of outdated infrastructure, drainage and circulation system improvements, and the installation of a new pool decking and fencing.

Community Survey

The city put out a Playground Improvements Survey following the meeting. The survey is due Friday, July 19, 2024. Take the survey here.

Click here to view the slideshow presentation from Saratoga Associates.