Growing Leagues Wrestle with Crunch

By Etta Sanders
JUNE 2, 2006

The score: natural grass 1, artificial turf 0.

The Battery Park City Authority turned down a request last month from the Downtown soccer and baseball leagues to replace the grass at the Battery Park City ball fields with artificial turf. The leagues said the turf would provide more playing time for the neighborhood's burgeoning population of ball-playing youngsters. But the BPCA countered that the leagues already have access to the fields almost all of the available time during their seasons.
"The Authority has decided for now we do not want to go with artificial turf," James Cavanaugh, president of the BPCA, told the Trib. "We don't think artificial turf will contribute a major amount of new playing time." Like the call for more Downtown schools, the request for artificial turf is tied to concerns over Lower Manhattan's population explosion of children. Both leagues have been growing, to 750 soccer players and 600 Little Leaguers, and league officials say that with the increase in the Downtown residential population they expect growth of 20 percent a year. "We are probably the most densely packed Little League in the country," said Mark Costello, a member of the league's board. In recent meetings with the authority and members of Community Board 1, the leagues have said they lose playing time because of the maintenance requirements for natural grass. The fields are currently closed from Thanksgiving until the beginning of April. They are also closed year-round on Mondays for maintenance and are reserved for corporate leagues on Tuesdays.

"Given how quickly the neighborhood is growing, it's not a practical surface any more," said Don Schuck, president of the Downtown Soccer League.

The BPCA is making some concessions. Beginning this month, the fields will be available to the baseball league for three hours on Mondays.

Vincent Licata, president of the Downtown Little League, said that with artificial turf fields the Little League season could begin a month earlier. Schuck said having use of the fields on Mondays and Tuesdays would alleviate crowding for soccer, and that the playing season could be extended if the fields stayed open in the winter.

"We could play until Christmas time," Schuck said. "As long as there isn't snow on the ground, we could play."

Jeff Galloway, a community board member who heads a neighborhood ball fields task force, said he had initially agreed that the amount of additional playing time didn't justify replacing grass with plastic, until he ran the numbers. Even aside from league play, he said, the fields could be used by neighborhood kids all winter for free play. "If the fields were open after school, you'd see lots of kids out there every day," he said.

The task force will be meeting with the Battery Park City Authority again this month, but artificial turf is likely to remain a tough sell. The BPCA operates under strict "green" policies that require developers to build in environmentally conscious ways. The ball field grass is maintained without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. "It's going to be hard to argue plastic is more environmentally friendly," said Galloway.

But even if more playing time is provided on the existing fields, it won't accommodate the growing population. The Little League has also been trying to get use of the batting cages near Pier 25 run by the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT). Having some kids take their weekday batting practice at the cages would relieve some of the pressure for practice time on the fields. "Kids can have baseball experience in a small space in a safe way," Costello said.

The six cages are open only on weekends until Memorial Day, making them unavailable for most of the Little League season. "It's insanity having all these kids crammed onto the ball fields while these state-of-the-art cages are padlocked," Costello said.

The Little League offered to operate the cages if they could be opened sooner, Costello said. But Chris Martin, a spokesman for the HRPT, said the cages need to be run by trained staff for liability reasons.

College students, who are not available until June, staff the cages. "They appear to be very simple, but they're not," Martin said. "They're very intricate."
At the end of last month, progress was being made, said Costello. The HRPT was considering a proposal to let the league reserve blocks of time and prepay for tokens at a discounted rate. "These are two things they weren't willing to discuss a year ago," said Costello.

Use of those batting cages would provide only a temporary solution, however. The cages will need to be moved or dismantled when work begins on the Tribeca segment of Hudson River Park. "We'll try to find another location, but the cages are not part of the main plan for the park," Martin said.

The league raised money last month for a portable batting cage that can be used on the ball fields and is talking to the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy about ways to use it without harming the grass.

The Little League also has use of batting cages at the gym in Borough of Manhattan Community College and at Pier 40 and more expensive cages at Chelsea Piers. For games, they travel to East River Park and Central Park. This year they will also be able to use the field on Governors Island, although the ferries don't run until the beginning of June, when only a month of the season remains.

"Our kids have to get shipped all over," Costello said.
In the meantime, the issue of grass vs. turf will probably not go away. "Maybe in a few years when we have 1,000 kids," Licata said, "we may have to look at it again."