The more Brookland resident Douglas Tyrka listened to D.C. officials talk about the big, shiny new recreation center they planned to plop down on local parkland, the less he liked the sound of it. So, at a community meeting last month, he asked some questions.

Had the city ever surveyed Brookland residents about what they wanted in a recreation center? No, acknowledged D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation official Sandra Hill.

Could residents vote for something other than such a big building, which with its nearly Olympic-size pool, gym and other facilities, would eat up a sizable chunk of precious local green space? No, Hill said.

How about skipping just the pool, Tyrka asked? (There are two other open or soon-to-be-open indoor public pools within five minutes of Turkey Thicket Park.)

No again, Hill said.

There was no chance to veto the pool, and there would be no more voting on what kind of facility the neighborhood got, she said.

"We can’t go back," she said.

It was, Tyrka said last week, the kind of stonewalling response that has frustrated and confused Brookland residents in the three months since city officials first unveiled plans for the new recreation center – a building nearly 20 times the size of the modest existing structure – in poorly publicized, sometimes chaotic meetings.

"(They’ve) just made it clear that our agreement is irrelevant," said Tyrka, who like others said he would like to see a new center – but done right.

"If you ask questions, you’re an opponent," he said. "So the way they draw the lines, I have to be opposed."

Finally, late in June, Tyrka and others say, they got some news that helped the city’s hasty, our-way-or-the-highway approach make some alarming sense.

They learned that, according to a city official, Turkey Thicket is "a test case."

In February, the Williams administration quietly got a 120-day emergency ruling from the Board of Zoning Adjustment (renewed for another 120 days in June) to let the city skip public zoning hearings--claimed by some to be the average citizen’s surest vehicle for an effective voice on local development issues--as it embarks on an ambitious multimillion-dollar plan to do "renovations, raze and reconstruction, and/or additions" to 20 city recreation and community centers, mostly in Wards 5, 6 and 7 on the city’s east side.

The areas range from large open green spaces like Turkey Thicket Park to the small "pocket playground" at 14th and Girard streets NW.

The zoning rule change gives the city a "matter of right" to construct buildings of up to 40 feet in height on up to 60 percent of the area of such sites.

Turkey Thicket, say city sources, is the city’s first attempt to push a recreational project through with no chance for the public to query its suitability at an open zoning hearing.

Next local residents learned that on July 1, city officials scheduled an appearance before the city Zoning Commission to ask that the change be made permanent.

Thus, critics say, the sort of "development by fiat" that some Brookland residents say has characterized the Turkey Thicket project could become the city’s norm, with a crucial democratic tool stripped from local residents’ hands, at least for recreational space.

"I’ve learned that if Parks and Rec feels unfettered, they can’t be trusted," Tyrka told the commissioners bluntly.

The city’s request is pending commission action.

Parks and Recreation Director Neil Albert told the commission the reason for the request is time lost in the zoning hearing process.

"Zoning discussions can add six to nine months to a project," he said.

But the commissioners also heard strong opposition to the proposed change from Brookland residents, as well as residents of Takoma, Georgetown and other neighborhoods where the city has in recent years attempted sometimes ill-received renovations and rebuildings of recreational facilities.

Loretta Neumann, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Parks and the Environment at the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, which submitted a letter opposing the zoning rule change, said Takoma residents were familiar with the kind of purely pro forma citizen input Brookland residents say the city is seeking there.

"They love to have a meeting, let people ask a few questions--and then they can say they have community support," she said. "‘Now let’s move on,’ they say."

In Takoma, she said, Parks and Recreation at first proposed tearing down an existing swimming pool building—"a lovely old pool house built in the 1930s, an icon of the neighborhood"--and replacing it with a "big, blocky rec center."

"We told them that wasn’t what we wanted," she said--but at first, she said, the city ignored residents’ demands to be consulted on what kind of facility fit the neighborhood.

Only after months of vigorous political lobbying, she said, and a local architect volunteering time to come up with an alternative design, did the city finally turn an ear to residents.

But she warned the zoning commission that "public pressure isn’t enough," noting the uncertainty of political pressure tactics.

"There’s no really meaningful way to stop them" outside of the zoning process, she said.

Brookland resident Diane Pecor, a transportation consultant, said that while the city seeks to avoid a zoning hearing for the Turkey Thicket rec center, it ignores growing traffic and density pressures in Ward 5.

She pointed out that Ward 5 already has more big institutions than any other ward, with three universities and several hospitals, as well as halfway houses, with a longtime deficit of streets and roads.

She said several new projects that will add traffic to local roads around Turkey Thicket will soon come online, including a planned nearby conference center and hotel and further development around the Brookland-CUA Metro stop.

At the same time, she said, the new rec center is described as a regional facility with a capacity of 500 people.

"You are just going to crush these neighborhoods," she said.

Brookland resident Jane Lincoln told the zoning commission that at Turkey Thicket meetings in April and May, city officials misled residents with promised copies of traffic and environmental impact studies. "But they were never delivered," she said.

In June, The Common Denominator reported that Parks and Recreation documents obtained by the newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act request showed those studies were never done.

"I’m an idealist, but it seems that what we were being told by city officials was just to keep us happy," said Lincoln.

Others told the commissioners they have had good experiences partnering with Parks and Recreation.

Peter Easely, a member of the Friends of Kennedy Playground, told the commissioners that the group had worked closely with Parks and Recreation on developing a new, bigger rec center there.

"We’ve worked very closely with Parks and Rec on this," he said. "And while there have been some disagreements, it’s generally been a very good partnership."

Easley said he is "supportive of any measures that will help them in their work."

Longtime ANC 5A Commissioner Mary Baird Currie, a perennial booster of the Turkey Thicket rec center project who testified in favor of the zoning change proposal, insisted in an interview last week that progress on Turkey Thicket is long overdue.

"There has been a community effort for at least 12 years," she said.

She dismissed the need for environmental or traffic studies.

"These are things that people have come up with of late," she said.

"Turkey Thicket is not the first rec center that Parks and Rec has ever built. They are not going to waver outside of the process. Parks and Rec knows what the process is, and that is what they are going to do," she said.

Last week a Brookland resident said Currie asked him in May not to publicize an upcoming community meeting on Turkey Thicket.

James Watkins, a resident who said he generally supports a new rec center at Turkey Thicket but has gotten disillusioned by the current process, said that after residents told city officials at one of the first Turkey Thicket meetings that they wanted more time to consider the design for the new center so more residents could be notified, Watkins proposed to Currie that he post notice of the new meeting date on the local Internet bulletin board, which many residents use to stay current on Brookland events.

But, he said, after an ally of Currie’s in supporting the new center, who overheard his offer and suggested to Currie that posting a notice on the listserv would only cause "people to come in and get involved and ask questions," Currie told him, "Don’t put the meeting on the listserv, or what it’s going to be about."

Currie last week acknowledged that she discouraged Watkins from posting the notice, but said she did so only because a notice was already posted on the ANC’s own website.

Meanwhile, some residents guessed they saw the imprint of a hand bigger than Parks and Rec’s behind the city’s attempt to avoid public zoning hearings.

"I’m always nervous in a democratic society when people who are elected to represent us do something that allows them to act without consulting us," said Ralph Bucksell, incoming president of the Michigan Park Citizens Association, which represents the area in which Turkey Thicket Park is located.

"That’s when my antennae go up," he said.

"My big question is, What’s the rush?" he asked. "I don’t know what this is, but it’s obviously something."

Brookland resident Melissa Houghton speculated that "the city has an agenda here."

"They’re either trying to fill some election promises, or some development promises," she said.

According to some observers, an oft-heard assumption about the city’s move to get a freer hand in redeveloping recreational facilities is that it is related to the Williams administration’s desire to host the 2012 Summer Olympics in the Washington-Baltimore region.

"All the buzz at the (zoning commission) hearing was about the big O," said a resident who testified against the zoning change last week.

Another surmise--since most of the current 20 fast-track projects are in Wards 5, 6 and 7 and the plan originated late last year, when Williams had reason to guess he’d face opposition in this year’s mayoral election--is that the crash-course to visibly gift neighborhoods where Williams lost or ran weakly in 1998 is just raw politics.

"The only emergency behind this emergency legislation was the needs of the mayor’s political campaign," said Ward 5 resident Philip Blair Jr., an opponent of the zoning change.

Blair added, "The timing and sudden rush to push it through is because the mayor needs to have a win in Ward 5," which he lost to Councilman Chavous in1998. "It’s not a rational response to the recreational needs of the city."

But last week Jennifer Steingasser, the city Office of Planning official who drafted the proposed zoning changes, sought to distance top officials from the document.

"Parks and Recreation approached the Office of Planning" about the changes, she said, saying that her office’s only role was to devise language to facilitate goals set by the parks department.

"We crafted and submitted the changes on behalf of Parks and Rec," she said.

But William Highsmith, a senior associate at Jair Lynch Consulting, a District firm acting as program manager for six of the 20 fast-track projects, who Parks and Recreation has designated as their spokesman on the zoning proposal, last week responded differently. He said that the Office of Planning, which is an arm of the mayor’s office, actively helped devise the zoning-change strategy.

"It was us, the Office of Planning, and Parks and Rec at the table" devising the strategy, he said.

Brookland resident Richard Houghton, an opponent of the city’s zoning petition, said that Highsmith told him last month that a main impetus for the zoning change is that "the mayor wants this done for the community."

Highsmith acknowledged the statement, saying, "To try to further the mayor’s aims, we examined a whole array of possibilities, and the text amendment presented itself."

"There was no involvement from anyone in the mayor’s office," however, he said.

While testifying before the commissioners, Sara Green, an ANC 4B commissioner active on the Takoma Recreation Center project, told the panel that the city’s proposal represented an unnecessary choice.

"We’re being told we can’t have both a timely process and community input," she said. "That’s ridiculous. We can have both."

Copyright 2002, The Common Denominator