SEE: The Village's Mercer Playground To Get Colorful $385K Revamp

GREENWICH VILLAGE, MANHATTAN — A $385,000 revamp of Mercer Playground will breathe new life into the play area's cracked pavement and deteriorating brick walls, designs for the project show.

Preliminary designs unveiled last week for a renovation of Mercer Playground — which sits a block from Washington Square Park — show that the city's Parks Department plans to turn the half-acre concrete park into a colorful mosaic play area with new benches, entrances and a resurfaced floor and walls.

The designs come about a year after Community Board 2 first asked the Parks Department to look into renovating the park and dozens of residents told officials what they'd like to see in the project, which will be funded by New York University.

Parks officials presented the designs to the board's Parks Committee last week and will present updated versions to the committee this spring, the department said.

Perhaps the biggest transformation in the upgrade will be to the playground's play area floor, which officials hoped to "bring life and energy" by adding color where grey and dull green concrete once was.

(Courtesy of NYC Parks).

The renovation will also fix areas in the floor that were causing "ponding" and resurface and repaint brick walls around the play area that were deteriorating, designs show.

(Courtesy of NYC Parks). Photos of existing conditions in the playground.

Residents told parks officials that they most wanted to use the playground for "pre-teen open play" and riding bicycles, skateboards and scooters, officials said.

They also said that safety at the park and access to its play area needed upgrading.

The renovation will include adding more entrances on Mercer Street so that it is more welcoming, officials said.

Designs also show that benches and at least one new tree will be added along the fence area.

The redesign got mixed reviews at the Parks Committee meeting last week, according to amNY. Some residents worried about the number of benches, the lack of extra entrances and the fact that open play would be in the same area as cyclists or scooter and skateboard riders.

Mercer Playground is one of New York City's youngest parks and sits between Mercer Street and Wooster Street with Third Street and Bleecker Street bordering it to the north and south.