Plans to revitalize Glenarden’s Seventh Street Park — gutted several years ago because of complaints about loitering and sexual activity — have some of the city’s Ward 3 residents concerned that new benches and grills will invite old behaviors.
Ward 3 residents say adding things such as park benches to beautify the now-empty former playground will make it easier for drug sales and, in some cases, for people to have sex.
The city administration applied for and received a $28,000 state grant from the state’s Department of Natural Resources last year to renovate the vacant playground as an effort to enhance city parks, said Councilwoman Margaret Dade (Ward 2).
Councilwoman Jennifer Jenkins (Ward 3) is planning a 7 p.m. Feb. 24 public forum at the James R. Cousins Jr. Municipal Center for residents to voice their concern after a sudden increase in residents telling her they were not in favor of the park.
Gracie Briggs, a Seventh Street resident since 1964, said the lot has been in decline for the past 18 years. She would rather see a single-family house built on the land instead or plants and shrubs if nothing else. She doesn’t want to see any place to sit or a restroom.
The original plan called for amenities such as picnic tables, landscaping, a wheelchair-accessible portable toilet and charcoal grills, Jenkins said.
“It wouldn’t be there a month before it was turned over,” Briggs said of a portable toilet. “We don’t have a park force like [Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission] has a force to go and clean it. So who’s going to clean it? What would I be smelling as soon as the public got through it?”
Glenarden does not have its own parks and recreation department.
The city removed benches and swings from the park in 2004 because of resident complaints, said Verley Wilson, a former councilwoman and a Ward 3 resident. Glenarden Police Chief Philip O’Donnell, who has been in this post since 2008, said it has been a long time since he has received resident complaints about the park, but he did not have statistics on how many calls he received on average.
Jenkins said she talked to as many Seventh Street residents as she could because she knew there were a few residents who did not want to see anything at all in the lot.
“All of them said they would welcome having something nice there, but they had concerns about kids that would hang out and loiter,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins said she would not want to have a project that would cause residents sleepless nights. However, she said, the money could be used for some type of enhancement, because people continued to loiter there regardless of the absence of park equipment.
Donald Bell, Glenarden’s interim city manager, contacted the Department of Natural Resources, which said the city can stray from some of its original ideas. Jenkins’s suggestions include fencing in the area, closing the park at dusk and surveillance cameras.
But using the money for another location is not an option, and Jenkins said she hopes the money would not have to be returned to the state. The city has until September to spend the money and plans to spend it before the deadline based on what residents want there, Bell said in an e-mail.
“These are the type of things that make it difficult to get larger government bodies to help us,” Jenkins said. “They want a definitive plan, and they want to see people move forward on these plans.”
O’Donnell said surveillance cameras would not be feasible, because no one would be around to monitor them. If any part of the grant were used for cameras, he doubts money would be left over for the other planned amenities.
However, O’Donnell said, he and 10 officers have picked up patrols there at Jenkins’s and residents’ request.
“It’s been somewhat of a lovers’ lane,” O’Donnell said of the park area. “There were complaints about kids going down there smoking marijuana. I would go down there in the morning and couldn’t find any evidence in the street like marijuana cigarettes.”
He said one of the major problems was a Seventh Street home that was the source of drug sales last year. In September, Glenarden police served a search warrant on the home that resulted in three arrests and recovered firearms.
O’Donnell said that since the warrant was served, there has been less criminal activity but that Seventh Street is a vibrant street in general, with people out and about and on their porches.
“I’m up there five times a day, personally, and the officers have to go through there in the evening, and they have to mark on their sheets how many times they go through there,” he said.
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