Do Bold Stripes Turn Park Into a Circus? By Carl Glassman From their fourth-floor balcony overlooking Greenwich Street, Darrell Wilks and Valerie Cates have a beautiful view of Washington Market Park. This fall, the park has been especially colorful, with the golden leaves of its honey locust trees framing the broad blue and purple stripes of the new playground.   Blue and purple? Stripes? That not-so-natural addition, marking the safety surface of the expanded play area near Chambers and Greenwich streets, have Wilks, Cates and many of their neighbors seeing red. “Why all of a sudden do they put in this carnivalesque color scheme?” Wilks asks as he looks across the street from his balcony. “It doesn’t make any sense.” The couple, who live at 311 Greenwich St., are so angry over their marred view that they have circulated a petition in their building and next door at 303 Greenwich St. So far they have about two dozen signatures, mostly from neighbors who also overlook the park. (Others who were less than sympathetic to the cause jotted their own suggestions, such as “Get real,” “Get a life,” and “Move to the country.”) Cates said her park view was a big reason she bought her apartment 14 years ago, and now “it’s like living across the street from McDonald’s.” “It’s pretty sad because I no longer have that impression of nature across the street,” she said. “That corner is the least treed, and it just reeks of something commercial.” “It’s a mistaken opinion that kids can only have fun around bright colors,” said Joshua Bach, of 303 Greenwich St. “You can make something that’s interesting and tasteful at the same time.” The residents feel there is hope yet, because the surface is temporary. It will be replaced in the next few months after play equipment is installed in that section of the park. At last month’s meeting of the Washington Market Park’s Board of Directors, board members discussed the controversy. “A lot of this is very new and people react to it,” said David Drane. “You shouldn’t run around like crazy changing everything because of a couple of [complaints]. We need to have a lot of respect for the architect’s design and vision because that’s why we pay him.” Fraya Berg, who said she has attended all the presentations on the park plans, said she was “stunned” to see the stripes, though she liked them. “I was told they were going to be greens and browns. We were not going to have wood but we were going to keep the colors really neutral.” It is not clear whether the color scheme was included in plans presented to the city’s Art Commission, a panel that must approve visible additions to city property. By late last month, the Commission had yet to respond to a request by the Trib to see the approved plans. Lee Weintraub, who designed the new play area as well as the original park, said he was “pretty sure” the Art Commission saw the color scheme. But in any case, he said, it was premature to judge the design now because, lacking play equipment and plantings, the area is only “half done.” The color scheme, he added, serves as “compensation” to the kids for the loss of sand, a dominant feature of the former play area. “The program is not to make something that appeals to someone from their fifth-floor window,” said Weintraub. “The children at Washington Market Park clearly carry the day.”