Residents want to improve Irwin Park
Irwin Park residents say they are ready to do what's necessary — including hosting fundraisers — to help improve Irwin Park, off Pennsylvania Avenue.
Several people appeared before council last week to discuss concerns about conditions at the park.
Michael Yunn, who participated in a “walk around” at the park recently with Mayor Bob Wayman and several other residents, said they reviewed 10 assets in the park in need of attention, including the volleyball, basketball and tennis courts; the children's spray and wading pool; the picnic pavilion; the amphitheater; and the Little Knight's Kingdom playground.
“We identified the repairs needed for each one of those,” said Yunn, who asked council, “What can we do to immediately rectify some of these things? Like getting the nets put up, getting the water turned on and having the volleyball courts lined up and the sand put in.”
Yunn, who won a Republican nomination in the spring primary to run for council in the fall general election, said he and other residents are interested in volunteering to improve the park.
While reinstalling nets on the courts and making other improvements are not a major obstacle, they might be pointless until borough officials find a way to address the problem of vandalism that has plagued the park, said Jim Halfhill, the superintendent of public works.
“Unfortunately, it's a vandalism issue,” Halfhill said. “We buy them (tennis court nets) every year and put them up, but sometimes they ‘grow legs,' sometime they get cut down.”
Halfhill said the sand was removed from the volleyball courts several years ago at council's direction because it became a nesting ground for bees, and the wading pool, though operable, was vandalized. He said the pool cannot be operated unattended because that would create a drowning hazard if the drain gets blocked.
Public-works employees regularly paint over graffiti only to have it reappear within days, and it is common to find trash cans knocked over or tossed into the creek, Halfhill said.
“It's a beautiful park, but it's old. Right now, we concentrate on keeping the grass cut and fixing things when they are broken,” he said after the meeting. “If council wants us to do more, all they have to do is provide me with some direction on what they want.”
Wayman, who said improving the borough's parks is among the issues he wants to focus on as mayor, said that one way to address the vandalism in Irwin Park is to install lighting.
“We have a large area there that is dark at night with no activities going on,” he said. “It's a perfect situation for crimes like vandalism to occur.”
Last year, police Chief Roger Pivirotto said motion-sensitive lights and upgrades to the park's video-surveillance system would allow officers to better monitor what's going on in the park overnight.
While the park already is equipped with video cameras, the cameras are not sophisticated enough to record activity when it is dark, Halfhill said.
Wayman said one solution would be to have a motion-sensor lighting system installed to deter vandalism while at the same time reduce the impact on surrounding homes. He said he will explore the cost of lighting sections of the park and present the findings for council's consideration.
But more important than coming up with a list of solutions to improve the park is the fact that residents have started to show interest in getting involved to make it happen, Wayman said.
“Something like this really has to be citizen driven,” he said after the meeting. “And now that we have a group of people who want to help with this, some of these improvements are doable.”
In addition to Yunn and Wayman, Councilwoman Deb Kelly and residents Robert Hollingshead and Tony Marsiglio are among the residents who have agreed to serve on an informal steering committee that will develop a park improvement strategy.
While much of the focus at last week's council meeting was on Irwin Park, Wayman said the committee also will look into what improvements are needed at Penglyn Park.
Council last week voted to apply for a $187,500 state Greenways, Trails and Recreation Grant to pay for park improvements. If the grant is awarded, it will require a 20-percent match from the borough.
While members of the steering committee would like to address the question of reopening the Little Knight's Kingdom play area, getting that done might prove a difficult task.
Access from inside the park to the wooden playground, which was built by volunteers in 1994, was shut off in 2012 because the bridge leading to it became unstable. At the time, borough officials estimated it could cost as much as $75,000 to repair the bridge.
The other access point to the playground is a walking trail that starts near the parking lot of Queen of Angels Catholic School.
The playground also was constructed before the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, required that such structures be accessible to people with physical disabilities.
The act requires officials to make playgrounds built before November 2000 ADA-compliant when improvements or structural updates are made. Since being closed, the playground has fallen into disrepair.
Tony LaRussa is a Trib Total Media staff writer.
