Ribbon Cutting Held Today At Edenwald Playground

Bronx Borough Commissioner Hector Aponte and Council Member Larry B. Seabrook today cut the ribbon on Edenwald Playground. Children from P.S. 112, the Bronxwood School, also attended the ribbon cutting ceremony.

"Thanks to $2.2 million in Croton mitigation funds, the redesign of Edenwald Playground transformed an outdated, primarily paved site into a soft, green, safe and fun playground for the community," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "The new leafy oasis evokes the playground's namesake of the property's early 20th century estate owner John H. Eden and ‘wald' which is the German word for ‘forest.'"

The popular yet well-worn play equipment was replaced with new state-of-art play equipment, a youth rock climbing wall, swings, toddler play equipment and swing area, and a custom spray shower with boulders. The playground and comfort station feature ADA accessibility.

The park is enhanced with large planting beds providing year-round color and texture adding over 7,500 square feet of green space to the park - an increase of 28% of greenery which will capture rainwater. Continuous planting beds along the park's perimeter establish a natural barrier and help define and separate different areas within the park. Fifty-five new trees and over 600 shrubs were added to the park to create a new "Eden's Forest" - emulating the park and neighborhood's namesake, John H. Eden. The planted trees will count towards Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC initiative called MillionTreesNYC, which has the goal of planting and caring for one million new trees by 2017.

This playground, like the adjacent housing project, street, and neighborhood, takes its name from the Edenwald Estate, which stood near Boston Road, Light Street and Conner Street. The name Edenwald is taken from John H. Eden who lived in the estate in the early 20th century, and "wald" the German word for forest. After World War II, the City acquired the land in order to build the 2,036-unit housing development, which houses approximately 6,000 residents. The City acquired the land for this playground on November 28, 1950, and it was named for the adjacent houses on June 26, 1954.

The project is part of a $220 million investment in Bronx Parks funded by mitigation funds from the construction of the Croton Water Filtration Plant through the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the Municipal Water Finance Authority. Croton-funded projects are improving neighborhood parks, renovating regional recreation facilities, developing the Bronx Greenway, improving and expanding access to the Bronx waterfront, and "greening" the borough. To date, Parks has completed forty construction projects totaling over $80 million and 17 more projects representing over $52 million are currently in construction. There are also 19 additional projects representing over $66 million currently in design or procurement.