Washington Market Park to Be Temporary Entrance for BMCC Work is expected to begin late this month on the reconstruction of a ramp leading from Chambers Street to the main entrance of Borough of Manhattan Community College. The rebuilding project is being undertaken because the ramp is on the verge of collapse and because it does not comply with federal guidelines for handicap access. The ramp also serves as the western wall of Washington Market Park. Last month, BMCC officials asked the park’s board of directors to allow its estimated 6,500 to 8,000 students to reach school by walking through the park, which would remain open to students only from dusk to 11 p.m. BMCC security guards would be posted in booths at the bottom of the stairs leading to the college and at the park’s Greenwich Street entrance. The school would provide extra lighting at night. The request was coolly received at a meeting of the park’s board last month. Most board members said that they feared the park would be overwhelmed by students and could invite “hanging out” and illicit activities. “To have it take the place of the sidewalk on Chambers Street is a use that the park is not designed for,” said board member Harriet Grimm. “I think it’s going to trash the lawn and I think it’s going to provide for activities that we would not want to see in the park.” The college will be opening other entrances to the school, and Grimm and other board members said they wanted the college to show that the park entrance would be needed as well. But Bill Watson, the board’s outgoing president, said he believed that the school has provided enough assurances of security that he will not try to stop the school’s use of the park at night. He said he wants to encourage good relations with the school. “They are our neighbors,” he said, noting that the park may be making some requests as part of the ramp construction, including handicap access to the basketball court. In an interview, Scott Anderson, BMCC’s vice president for administration, said that other entrances will be open to students as well, but that the lighted park would provide the safest and closest entrance for students coming from Chambers Street. At night, he said, students will be “handed off” from one guard to the next, and if someone disappears into the park, additional security will be called to find that person. “We don’t want any problems with ne’er-do-wells,” said Anderson. “The object is not to provide a cul de sac for people who are not neighborhood-friendly.”