by Yuliya Panfil

After more than a decade, Upshur Park, located at 4300 Arkansas Ave NW, is scheduled for a $19 million renovation.

The site, located along 14th street and Arkansas Ave, between Upshur Street and Allison Street NW, includes a playground, baseball and soccer fields, pool, basketball court, dog park and recreation center, as well as a community garden.

You can submit your thoughts on what to prioritize in the renovation via this online survey. The deadline to submit input is November 19th.

A $19 million renovation is relatively major, allowing for significant upgrades and redesigns to the range of facilities included in the site. By comparison, the renovation of nearby Petworth Park at 8th and Taylor Streets and completed in 2020, was $2 million, and the Langdon pool renovation budget was $3 million.

“I’m truly so excited to get to work on a project that has the potential to bring so much joy to our community,” said Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (4C01) Casey Swegman, whose single member district the renovation falls into. “I’ve already met a lot of incredible people in the course of gathering input on this project and really look forward to hearing from and sitting down with more folks and building the vision for this park renovation project together.”

Current recreation center at Upshur Park

At a neighborhood walkthrough last month, DPR shared that renovations are anticipated to take a year once they break ground. The start date is still to be determined — original plans called for an FY 2023 groundbreaking, but that’s not going to happen at this point. DPR hopes to phase the renovation, so that Upshur Pool is closed for no more than one summer.

Project timelines are often influenced by the level of community input and the time it takes to resolve contentious issues. For example, the Petworth Park renovation nearby was delayed after the community took issue with DPR’s proposed playground surface covering.

During the neighborhood walkthrough, neighbors voiced several concerns with the pool, which opened in 1988. The kids’ pool does not have a lifeguard, the locker rooms are outdated, and erosion from a nearby hill sometimes results in dirt falling into the pool. Neighbors asked for a picnic area near the pool (snacks are not currently allowed at the pool, limiting the amount of time parents can realistically spend there with their kids), and a splash park.

Upshur Pool entrance off of Arkansas Avenue

Neighbors similarly asked for several updates to the playground, including ADA compliance, a tunnel slide and exercise equipment for adults. They also suggested some options for making the large hill behind the pool and playground into usable space, for example by incorporating a portion of the playground into the hill, creating an amphitheater and linking indoor basketball courts into the hill.

Basketball courts at Upshur Park with the hill in the background

Swegman said the community has big dreams of improvements to the small existing community gardens, making them into a space that people without plots, especially seniors, could enjoy.

Soccer pitch and baseball field on Upshur Street

Take a Survey and Share Your Opinion

Make sure you fill out the survey, as results will help inform an upcoming ANC 4C recommendation letter to DPR that commissioners will draft and vote on at the December 13th ANC meeting. The renovations will also be discussed at the next ANC 4C meeting, on November 8th. Register online to attend in person at the Petworth Library or via Zoom.

“We are working hard to gather feedback from neighbors about what they love about the park and what they would like to see improved and one way to do that is to share your feedback via survey,” said Swegman, who created the survey with 4C05 commissioner Brittany Kademian. “Your feedback will help inform the ANCs resolution to DPR as they embark on this multi-phase project.”