What is the Controversy Over OND Park?

Durham Parks and Recreation has for over seven years had a plan and budget for the upgrade of Old North Durham Park. These upgrades were sidelined by interest from the board of the Central Park School for Children (CPSC), a charter school next to the Park, in implementing a privately-developed and privately-financed plan for the Park. Most notably, the plan developed by CPSC and its coalition of private partners known as “Friends of Old North Durham Park” (FONDP) would reduce the existing regulation-size soccer field to a small “practice field” explicitly unable to accommodate league play. This would eliminate one of the primary recreational spaces used by our neighborhood’s lower income Black and Latino families. We believe CPSC’s plan would undermine the current use of the park by those families in favor of its own particular interests. It seems apparent to us and to others in the community that CPSC/FONDP’s plan fits into a larger downtown development plan that will ultimately displace Black and Latino communities from the neighborhood.

In internal memos in 2005, Durham Parks and Recreation cautioned against CPSC’s proposal saying “the park is for the whole city, not just the CPSC, and the whole city desperately needs more athletic fields.” Durham Parks and Recreation later began to argue against the regulation-size soccer field and in favor of CPSC’s private plan. We are concerned with this shift by DPR, as well as by the fact that the capacity of some private actors to raise funds–actors that also stand to benefit financially from the CPSC-proposed development of the park–have provided them with privileged access to city staff and officials. Many neighbors, including we at El Kilombo, want the city to address public, rather than private, demands, and upgrade the existing full-size soccer field which, as city documents show, is desperately needed.