Editor’s note: Below find a special report about Church Hill’s ongoing l’affair pétanque. 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.

The partially completed pétanque courts at Chimborazo Playground may soon disappear, but judging by the tension at a Tuesday evening neighborhood meeting at Lucks Field Community Center about the decision, local angst surrounding their construction, necessity, and removal seems likely to persist after they’re gone.

“Do we need to set some ground rules?” said Nissa Richardson, Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities’ (DPR) deputy director of capital projects, as she concluded a presentation alongside capital projects manager Ryan Rinn on the outcome of their latest survey on the currently paused construction project. “I know emotions are potentially high, so let's make sure that we're leaving space for others to speak.”

If the pun was unintentional—a French bowling game? Ground rules?—the underlying concern was prescient. For more than an hour, DPR officials and City Council President/7th District member Cynthia Newbille fielded a few complimentary comments and a whole lot of pointed questions from roughly 30 attendees the decision to reverse the controversial project at Church Hill park, which has been stuck in purgatory all summer as DPR has retroactively solicited community feedback while pursuing a missing stormwater management permit for the program.

The removal announcement came last week after DPR concluded an online survey on the matter that offered respondents three options: one that included completing the courts, and two that included removing the courts with different outcomes to follow. As The Lookout first reported, while Newbille and DPR director Christopher Frelke declared in a joint letter that “53.6% of respondents are in favor of removing the new pétanque courts instead of completing them,” the raw totals complicated that conclusion. The first option, which would have completed the courts, netted the most votes, but fell shy of a majority at 46.5% of 770 total responses. Officials combined the other two options to conclude a majority wanted the courts to be removed.

“The methodology was both quantitative and qualitative,” explained Newbille. “While there may have been issues with the quantitative component, the survey results, we also carefully listened to the comments that were provided, the emails that were sent, and that was compiled as well in the consideration.”

Perhaps because of this polling discrepancy, the mood turned touchy at many points during the meeting. Members and supporters of Les Boulefrogs Pétanque Club of Virginia (the local group that has played on Chimborazo Playground’s existing courts for two decades and proposed their expansion to DPR) vented at officials and perceived antagonists in the crowd.

“Have you been at the club?” one pro-pétanque speaker, who claimed he had driven from Fredericksburg to attend the meeting, demanded of Rinn. “You cannot just trust what you what you're getting, because I'm telling you, it's a lie. The green space [that was supplanted by the new courts] is not used, and if you would take the time to go, you would see for yourself.”

“A lot of these people who are complaining [about the courts] don't do anything to take care of the park,” exclaimed a woman.

“I have a problem with this continual use of the word ‘community park,’” another woman said, possibly referencing previously voiced concerns that the space, which lacks dedicated parking or a restroom facilities, is not suited to host pétanque tournaments for people from around the city or even out of town. “I have I feel like it's a weaponization against having people outside of the community come to Chimborazo Playground.”

(During her presentation, Richardson noted that the survey had received votes from “across the country.” The Lookout has requested more information from DPR about the geographic breakdown of the survey results, as well as a copy of officials’ presentation from Tuesday evening.)

A proposal from DPR to accommodate the club’s hoped-for tournaments at Midtown Green met with lukewarm interest. “Being a member of the club, it would be nice to have a home,” said another woman. (There are no plans to remove Chimborazo’s existing pétanque courts.) “Now I feel like we're being bounced around between Chimborazo and Midtown Green.”

The meeting wasn’t without brighter spots. The crowd gave light applause to Richardson and Rinn at the conclusion of their presentation, and some of the comments skewed more constructive and positive.

“I don't play pétanque, I’m just looking at this from a standpoint of fairness,” another attendee said. “If it's not so expensive to renovate those existing courts that are in sorry shape, perhaps that could be added into something you could do now.” Richardson and Rinn agreed to revisit a previously obtained quote from the contractor, Tennis Court, Inc., that had done the initial construction.

“The thing I've been asking for this whole process has been to have an adult in the room looking out for our neighborhood, our community, and I feel heard on that,” a man said.

For Chimborazo Playground, the next steps include engaging a contractor to remove the new courts and hiring a design firm to begin work on a master plan for the park. “We feel like we've gotten to a resolution that's going to allow us to start to rebuild some of that trust and allow community to work together over the course of time in order to move forward,” said Rinn

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

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