The Amigos Park saga in Mount Pleasant is reaching its conclusion. Pretty much no one is happy with the results.

After more than 13 years of advocacy work from neighbors, D.C. officials are finally on the cusp of opening a new park in Mount Pleasant. So why are park proponents still so upset?

A group of Mount Pleasant residents hoping to convert a small patch of vacant land at the corner of Kenyon Street and Mount Pleasant Street into a community gathering space believe District leaders, and a nearby business, still aren’t hearing their concerns. And as the project nears its conclusion, they fear the city could soon open a park that fails to meet the vision of advocates who have spent years hoping to convert a popular hangout spot for the neighborhood’s many Latino residents into a proper green space.

Nothing about this process has been easy or simple, and the denouement of this saga is no exception. 

“This was the Latino gathering space for many, many years, and it’s going to be destroyed,” says Lois Athey, who helps lead the Amigos Park Coalition. “It's going to be an eyesore. It's going to look ridiculous. It’ll look more like a jail cell than a park.”

The thrust of this push is straightforward enough: Organizers have hoped for years to formalize a gathering space, known in the neighborhood as “La Esquina,” or “the corner” in Spanish, into something that’s more well-maintained and appropriately honors Mount Pleasant’s significance to the city’s Latino community. At first, activists tried managing the effort themselves, but through many years of work, they were eventually able to bring the city on board, winning its official designation as a public park and funding for construction several years ago.

The area the city officially demarcated for the park was a small strip of city-owned land along Kenyon Street. But advocates as well as the city hoped to eventually convert the entire 1,700-square-foot lot into public parkland. The area surrounding the city’s portion of the lot is currently owned by the adjoining property, a Streets Market grocery store. Back in 2024, Streets’ landlord, Megdal Investments, offered to lease that land to the city and had extensive talks with officials about doing so. Last year, however, those talks fell apart, and now the city is proceeding with a more minimal park solely on the smaller strip of land, hoping to add a few benches and tables and improve the sidewalk.

Advocates for the park and many Mount Pleasant residents are deeply upset — and for some, it feels personal. Arturo Griffiths, one of the lead advocates for the park and a forceful advocate for Latinos in the District more generally, passed away last year. Many had hoped to see the park completed in his lifetime, and Athey (Griffiths’ longtime partner) feels the city’s actions have been particularly disrespectful to his long-held desire to see the park encompass the entirety of the lot.

Several weeks ago, the city’s decision to cut down several trees on the property set Mount Pleasant group chats ablaze, and fueled the coalition’s push to urge the city to reconsider.

“For multiple years, there has been widespread confusion about the status of the public and private space,” the area’s advisory neighborhood commission wrote in a September letter to the city agency managing the construction, the Department of General Services. “Now, as construction activities have begun, there has not been adequate transparency and community engagement.”

DGS only responded to the ANC late last month with answers to some of the community’s questions, noting that it plans to have work wrapped up by the end of November and officially open the park in early December. The agency wrote in a statement to The 51st that its "focus now is on completing the approved park improvements on the District-owned land, and delivering a welcoming, high-quality space that the community can enjoy." A spokesperson for the agency also said that it removed three trees on the site, but did so only to protect the roots of the larger, older trees nearby.

"The owner of Streets Market also plans to beautify and improve their property," the spokesperson added. "These improvements will contribute to a more attractive area for the community overall."

These assurances have done little to placate the park coalition, which is holding out hope that Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George may be more sympathetic than outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser. Some neighbors just want this saga to end, reasoning that anything built on the property is better than the current status quo. But the coalition hopes it can somehow delay construction until the next administration takes over.

“They’ve basically rushed this project, and it feels like Bowser is just trying to shove this down our throats before she leaves office,” says Dante O’Hara, a progressive organizer who’s been working with the park coalition. “It's going to look like crap, and the community is not going to be happy with it … and it’s going to put [Lewis George] in a really tough position if she hopes to reset things here when she gets in.”

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to any major change to the project is the site’s neighbor, Streets Market. Streets’ landlord, Megdal Investments, had said for years that it was open to finding a solution to building the full park organizers envision, perhaps by selling or leasing the land it controls to the city. But Athey says Streets executives balked at the idea, saying they might prefer to use that property for an expansion someday. 

The company hasn’t often participated in community meetings about the project (and no one from Streets or Megdal responded to requests for comment). But Athey shared a transcript of a meeting convened by Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau in October 2025. At one point during the meeting, Megdal’s representative actually pushed for a larger park area, calling the current plan “a disaster” that would be “impossible to manage” at its contemplated size. However, the Streets vice president, Campbell Burns, resisted any expansion of the park. He instead spent much of the meeting raising concerns about crime, drug use, and public urination on the lot.

As the lot owner, Megdal could, presumably, move forward with a land deal without Streets’ sign off. But activists say they’ve repeatedly been told by D.C. officials that Megdal views their tenants as having a “right of first refusal” on the land in question if it does indeed want to pursue an expansion. And Megdal may not be particularly interested in angering a tenant in an increasingly challenging economic environment for the city. 

The park coalition is hoping Lewis George (or perhaps the ward’s next councilmember, Aparna Raj) can mend some fences, or at least order up a redesign of the project to make it feel a bit less closed off and provide more spaces for people to gather. The city’s decision to include a large stage for events has also rankled some activists, who argue it eats up space in the already cramped park. Organizers say they’ve spoken with both incoming officials about the project, and they hope they’re receptive to these concerns. (Lewis George’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)

Raj called it “a huge shame” that things have progressed to this point, arguing Bowser has failed to adequately prioritize projects like this in the ward. (This is a widespread belief among advocates as well, who suspect the mayor resents that the left-leaning ward has never been terribly supportive of her as mayor.) But Raj also believes the government’s “hands are tied” in many respects, noting that she too has heard Streets is unwilling to budge on any land deal to expand the park. She suspects the better solution will be tinkering with the current design rather than holding out hope for the grocer to come around.

“Having the smaller space is not ideal, but it can be great if it’s used effectively and as long as it provides a space people actually want to go to,” Raj says. “I hope that the way that it's being developed now will be reflective of the needs of the community.”

The more construction the city completes, the harder it will be for the park coalition to ever secure meaningful changes. O’Hara says they’ve considered a public pressure campaign targeting Streets directly, but that could generate results too late to make a difference.

If nothing else, Athey is hoping the city can be persuaded to change course to honor Griffiths’ wishes. She says the city plainly recognizes the sensitivity of the issue in the wake of his death, as officials have pitched her on the idea of painting a mural of Griffiths somewhere at the new park. It’s a prospect she has no interest in, unless the situation changes.

“They're trying to win people over by saying, ‘We'll put our Arturo’s name up there,’ because everyone knows how long he fought for this,” Athey says. “We said: ‘Hell no.’”