Chianese Park feels like a lost cause. 

We have looked at the numerous plans and ideas pitched for “improving” Chianese over the years, and there seems to be no clear path to building a better park that achieves everything for everyone. 

The latest proposals are clear examples. “Option 1” shows a new access road running from north to south across the middle of the park. The access road includes more than 50 new parking spaces. More parking inside the park seems like a good way to pull parking off the side roads around the park. And that, in theory, should make the abutting neighbors to Chianese Park happy. 

It did not.

Instead, the residents voiced safety concerns about mixing cars going north to south (on the road) and kids going east to west (on the fields). They’re probably right to be worried. Anyone who has been to the park on a busy day — especially lower Chianese where there is head-in parking on both sides of Prince’s Hill Avenue — has likely seen children running from fields on one side of the road to fields (or an ice cream truck) on the other. The kids are not great about looking both ways before crossing. Adding an access road and more parking and more cars into the middle of the park may have been well-intended, but the safety trade-offs are worth considering. 

“Option 2” is even more flawed. Somewhere in the discussions about Chianese Park, the Pare Engineers thought it would be wise to replace a grass-covered baseball field with an asphalt-covered parking lot. Abutting neighbor John Brum called the parking lot an “eyesore.” Commission member Cat Horn wanted to make a motion to eliminate “Option 2” from discussions.

Officials are still working on the plans. They tabled the issue for a future meeting. They also discussed tweaking “Option 1” to move the access road to the southern edge of the property, and expanding the size of the soccer field in the plans so it could be used by other sports, including girls lacrosse. (Right now it’s too small to do that.)

The discussions and debates may, eventually, produce a better plan. But chances are good — quite good — that someone (neighbors, sports leagues, pickle ball enthusiasts) won’t love it. 

And that’s where leadership must step in and take actions in the best interests of the entire community. Barrington has a clearly documented shortage of quality youth sports fields. Chianese is a large, underutilized area of undeveloped space. There must be a way to use this space to address that problem.

Town leaders will need to find a way to make that happen. First, they have to accept that they can’t make everyone happy.