Editor’s note: Below find a special report about Church Hill’s ongoing l’affair pétanque. It was last updated at 3:40pm ET on August 28th, 2026. If you haven’t yet, please consider upgrading to keep independent journalism about your neighborhood free for all to read. Here’s how to submit tips, documents, correspondence, etc. with The Lookout for editorial consideration. Check the liveblog for reporting odds-and-ends about this controversy.—Dave.

Nearly four months since bulldozers dug up some turf and a whole lot of neighborhood angst at Chimborazo Playground, a majority of voters have declared a future for the neighborhood park—and despite being nearly complete, the controversial new pétanque courts will not be a part of it.

A majority of respondents to a survey conducted by the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities (DPR) “are in favor of removing the new pétanque courts instead of completing them,” wrote department Director Christopher Frelke and City Council President/7th District member Cynthia Newbille in a joint letter sent Tuesday afternoon. Given the result, DPR “will remove the new pétanque courts and engage an on-call design firm to work with us and the community on a site-wide planning effort.”

“Planned upgrades to the water fountain and restroom facilities will proceed this fall and winter,” they added. Unmentioned was the status of the permit that DPR had been retroactively pursuing to get the site in compliance with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s stormwater-management rules. Residents whose houses abut the alley north of Chimborazo Playground have told The Lookout that flooding there appears to have gotten worse since the project replaced ~4,400 square feet of grass with additional crushed-gravel courts.

The letter, circulated to community members and organizations via email by Ryan Rinn, a capital projects planner with DPR, can be read in full here.

While the memo from Frelke and Newbille stated that “53.6% of respondents” had voted to remove the added courts, it’s not immediately clear which option garnered the most votes. After publication, Tamara Jenkins, deputy director, public affairs in the Office of Strategic Communications & Civic Engagement (OSC), provided vote totals for each option in response to an inquiry from The Lookout:

It appears that the “majority” that DPR cited in favor of reversing the expansion of the pétanque courts derives from combining the votes for Options 2 and 3. ([139+273] / 770 = 53.506%.) Both those options include removal of the courts, but diverge on how to allocate other funds for Chimborazo Playground. Meanwhile, Option 1, which included completing the new courts, reached a plurality of votes, netting a 46.5% share of all the ballots cast, but did not reach a majority, either.

The Lookout followed up to understand how the result DPR described—which most closely matches the third option on DPR’s survey—squares with Frelke’s promise at a special community meeting on July 29th to “do what the majority of people tell us to do based on the polling." Because “[t]he primary question asked in the survey, and that [DPR] was charged with answering, was whether to finish the two pétanque courts or remove them,” replied Jenkins, and “Options 2 and 3 remove the pétanque courts,” the department “will remove the pétanque courts.”

All three of the options on DPR’s survey included repairing the defunct water fountain and restrooms. Beyond that work, here is how they deviated:

After presenting the findings of its retroactive solicitations of public feedback on the $68,000 boondoggle at the late-July community meeting, DPR launched the online poll on Google Forms for respondents to register which of the above options they preferred for the future of Chimborazo Playground. The survey, promoted by the department as well as via flyers and emails from Church Hill organizations including the Community for Chimborazo Playground (CFCP) and the Friends of Chimborazo Playground (FOCP), received “a robust response from 770 individuals,” Frelke and Newbille wrote.

The level of participation was remarkable, Jenkins said, calling it “the largest number of votes I have seen in a neighborhood park level survey.”

At the July meeting, Rinn told attendees that the survey was open to all. “All of our parks are open to everybody, so it doesn’t matter where you live when you want to vote on this,” he said. “I don't run a registrar. This is a public engagement process. Use your best judgement.”

Les Boulefrogs Pétanque Club of Virginia, the local group that has played the niche French bowling game in Chimborazo Playground for decades, envisioned the additional courts as replacements for one that they had “ceded” to flooding; it is now home to a “surprise hoop” that looms over a weedy gravel lot. The three other pétanque courts, on which Les Boulefrogs play regularly on Thursdays and Sundays, will remain in the park.

After publication, Karen Rankin-Morris, the club’s president, declined to comment on the outcome of the vote and the possible discrepancy with the totals.

For the Boulefrogs, any bitterness over the neighborhood’s rejection of the new courts may be tempered by an offer, first mentioned publicly by Frelke at the July meeting, to allocate the game more space at Midtown Green, the site of the Washington Commanders’ old training camp—itself relocated in 2023. “[T]his survey showed us that many pétanque players from near and far value spaces to learn and share their passion for the sport,” the letter reads. “The facility at Midtown offers sufficient space to hold these tournaments without making modifications or building any new courts.”

Check The Lookout’s L’Affair Pétanque Liveblog for the latest reportage.

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