SEE: City Reveals $7.3M Redesign Of Inwood Hill Park Fields

INWOOD, MANHATTAN — Designs are coming together for the reconstruction of three connected ballfields in Inwood Hill Park, which will be getting $7.27-million worth of improvements in the next few years.

Community Board 12 passed a resolution on Tuesday supporting Parks Department plans to reconstruct what are known as ballfields 1, 2 and 4 in a section of the park bordered by Seamen Avenue, which the department first revealed to the parks committee earlier this month.

The project comes out of an earlier idea to renovate "Ballfield 1" for about $1 million, which grew last year to include ballfields 2 and 4 since all three share an outfield. The final project will use a contribution from Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez to renovate all three fields at the same time, while keeping fields three and five open for games, officials said.

"The council member came back with substantial funding," Parks and Cultural Affairs Committee Chair Liz Ritter said Tuesday. "Instead of doing it as two projects, it's one big project."

The designs — which come after January meetings asking for feedback about the fields — include renovating the dug-outs, replacing the fields' fence, fixing drainage and erosion problems and adding more trees and seating.

Parks officials said they expect the project to start in the fall of 2021 or early 2022 and take about a year to 18 months to be completed.

Here's a look at the designs:

(Courtesy of NYC Parks).

All three fields will get new dugouts that are compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, including front-row accessible seats in the Ballfield 1 dugout. The dugouts will also get new trash receptacles, benches and bottle fillers.

The fields' uneven and deteriorating chain-link fence — which stands about eight feet tall except in a section next to a playground — will be replaced by a 16-foot fence around all three fields. The higher fence will help with complaints about fly-away balls heading into the nearby dog-park or other areas of the park, officials said.

Ballfield 1 will also include field lighting on its fence line. Parks officials said that the lights will not disrupt neighbors given that the fields dip below street level. Community Board 12 committee members, though, added a stipulation in their resolution to ensure teams that are permitted to use the park have time restrictions so the lights aren't on too late into the night.

(Courtesy of NYC Parks).

Ballfield 2 will get new accessible paths to its dugout and new trees near its entrance to provide more shade, officials said.

(Courtesy of NYC Parks).

At Ballfield 4, parks officials said one of the big complaints was flooding after rain and a lack of seating and shade to watch the games.

The designs will include a new seating area with picnic tables, benches and new trees. All three fields will have their in-fields and outfields resurfaced to solve drainage problems and erosion.

Community Board 12's resolution about the project also included calls for recycling receptacles, bottle fillers available to the public, foot pedals for water fountains to limit "touch points" and a call to enforce park rules while not "weaponizing" police or other officers against those that use the fields.