A Pop-Up Park Comes and Goes on a Busy Tribeca Street

While one person relaxes in a hammock and takes advantage of the free Wi-Fi, others enjoy ping pong, an inflatable pool with toy frogs and more during Park(ing) Day in three parking spaces on Greenwich Street, near Franklin. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Shoshana Bohrer, seated on a faux grass carpet laid out along three parking spaces on Greenwich Street, near Franklin, was watching her 2-year-old son curl up in a hammock while her daughter, 3, made a paper boat to float in the little inflatable pool next to her. Nearby, two men played ping pong.

“What a nice little treat on a Friday afternoon,” Bohrer said. “Now we don’t have to go to the park today.”

With horns honking and trucks rumbling by a few feet away, no one would confuse this narrow stretch of green on Sept. 18 with an actual park. But as one part of a worldwide event called “Park(ing) Day,” the tiny oasis made its point.

“It gives people a different perception of what you can do with such a small space and how you can change a street like Greenwich,” said Victoria Plummer, marketing coordinator for HR&A, the national real estate and economic development consulting firm that sponsored the Tribeca event. One of nearly 1,000 installations that day in 160 cities, the annual Park(ing) Day began in 2005 as a way to demonstrate alternate uses of city streets and the need for people-friendly changes to urban infrastructure.

“The idea of just changing a space in an urban environment like this is a really cool thing for kids that live here to see,” said Laura Benoist, whose children, ages 6 and 7, and two of their friends were making paper boats with the help of Kristy Raffensberger, the children’s librarian from the Hudson Park Library on Leroy Street who was also on hand to read to the kids.

Esme Hort, 8, pronounced the parklet “cool” as well, but for a more practical reason.

“You can do stuff and it’s for free,” the P.S. 234 3rd grader said. “You don’t have to waste money on it.”