Doyle Park | Solomon Foundation

Active Conceptual Projects Featured

DoylePlan — Conceptual Design for Doyle Park

Though small in size, the former Doyle Playground site, located just above the Tileston and Hollingsworth Dam, is one of Hyde Park’s only windows on the Neponset River. With our support a community led organization created a vision for a new park that will provide a new green gathering place for the neighborhood. The preliminary design includes open lawns for play, benches and picnic tables, an informal stage for community performances a natural play space using logs and existing boulders, and a river path connecting down stream past the dam to the Shops at Riverwood and up stream along the proposed Hyde Park Riverwalk to West Street. Once completed Doyle Park will become a gateway to nature for a community that was once cut off from the river.

Background: TOn this one-acre park was an active playground managed by the DCR which fell into disrepair and was dismantled leaving behind a vacant lot surrounded by a chain link-fence. In 2018 this forgotten place was reimagined through a community driven design process led by landscape architects from Offshoots, Inc. and the Horsley Witten Group. As part of their advocacy campaign to build the park the community undertook a massive clean up of the area which included removal of rusting fences and piles of trash, clearing of invasive trees, removal of asphalt, seeding and mowing a broad lawn for play, and painting a mural on a wall. The advocacy worked and the DCR finally agreed to take on the Doyle Park project.

Timeline

Date	Milestone
2016	P.O.W.H.E.R group formed by local advocates
2016	Park Clean-up days with volunteers
2017	Fairmount Greenway Community Vision Day
2017	Community clean-up day includes removal of degraded blacktop and overgrowth
2018	Southwest Boston CDC, applies for and receives support from the Foundation for P.O.W.H.E.R to begin a community driven design process
2018	Offshoots leads several community workshops to inform a conceptual park design
2018	A fall clean-up to remove fences and trash
2018	Southwest Boston CDC receives a grant from the Foundation for programming and stewardship of the site
2018	In the summer, the DCR establishes a lawn on the upper terrace of the park
2018	The same summer, with support from the Foundation, Offshoots is hired to clear and extend the lawn to the lower terrace
2019	Summer of 2019 the mural is completed by Artists for Humanity
2019	With support from the Foundation the site is surveyed in advance of continuing park planning
2020	Preliminary Survey and cost estimates completed
2020	DCR Kicks off design process, rehires OffShoots and Horsley Whitten
2022	Mitch Ryerson, artist, hired to work with community on interactive artwork
2023	Workshop onsite to gather input on interactive artwork
2024	Anticipate start of construction