BPC Ballfields Scheduled to Open April 1

After playing one baseball season and two soccer seasons on other fields in the city, local children will have their fields back—new and improved—just in time for next year's Little League Season, BPC Authority officials reported.

"If the weather cooperates, we hope to have the fields open by April 1," Susan Kaplan, senior project manager of Battery Park City Authority’s construction department, told Community Board 1’s ballfields advisory group on July 23.

Construction, now on schedule, could be slowed and the opening date delayed if the winter is particularly cold and snowy, she said.

Contractors have already stripped the top two feet of soil from the site and prepared the foundation for the fields. Drainage and irrigation systems will be installed in August and September and the playing area will be sodded in October.

The new fields will be on the same site as the previous ballfields—the block bounded by Warren, West and Murray streets and North End Avenue—but will be situated just east of those fields, covering what had been tennis and basketball courts. Two residential buildings are slated to go up on the same block, on the western side of the fields, but those development plans have been delayed by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and it is unclear when the buildings’ construction will begin.

The ballfields will include two baseball diamonds with grass infields and will accommodate one full-size soccer field or multiple smaller soccer fields. The fields will include dugouts, a scoreboard, an outfield fence and lights for evening games, all of which should be in place to welcome the Little Leaguers in the spring.

The advanced drainage system being installed will allow the fields to dry quickly so that kids can play on them as soon as possible after a rainfall, said Bill Palmer, vice president of landscape and planning at Helmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, the firm hired by the Battery Park City Authority to design and construct the ballfields.

"The system is identical to what we’ve been doing in professional ballparks around the country," he said. Among the ballparks designed by HOK are Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles, and the ballpark for the Staten Island Yankees, a minor league team.

Behind the backstops on the western side of the fields there will be a sidewalk and a grass-covered hill, landscaped with seating areas, with space for more than 100 spectators to watch games or lounge in the sun.

When the residential buildings are constructed, the hill will be replaced by a two-level arcade,
with a platform for spectators on top and locker rooms and storage space for the leagues underneath.