SAVE THE MEADOWS
What’s happening to the FDR Park Meadows?
Philadelphia Parks & Rec, with its partner the Fairmount Park Conservancy, is clear-cutting South Philadelphia’s only urban woodland park to build a $100 million sports complex with 16 artificial turf playing fields, while neglecting most of the city’s 192 neighborhood playing fields.
As of July 2026, there are still almost 100 acres of tree canopy and wildlife habitat left to save from toxic turf and development — and to visit and enjoy!
But about 75 acres have been clear-cut, including a huge area west and south of Bellaire Manor bulldozed in May and June of 2024 for the “Pattison Fields” phase of the $256 million FDR Park master plan. Hundreds of trees were destroyed, including 48 irreplaceable heritage trees, leaving a vast expanse of dirt and scrub.
At its eastern edge, where the Picnic Grove (pictured above) once stood, the first of the 16 planned turf fields is nearing completion.
The Pattison Fields phase, showing the heritage trees cut down in 2024 for parking lots and turf fields; and the first field under construction. What kind of “conservancy” would do this?
The development and privatization of our public lands is out of control.
The FDR Park Plan ignores the needs and desires of the community. It poses serious risks to the environment and public health, and sets a dangerous precedent of public land being handed over for private use — something we, the public, do not accept.
The plan was created behind closed doors by a private entity, the Fairmount Park Conservancy, in 2018 — before the golf course was closed, before community members discovered the healing powers of the Meadows during the pandemic, and before PFAS was found in artificial turf.
South Philly has only 5% tree canopy cover — lowest in the city. The plan will destroy our only woodland, a crucial green space that protects us from flooding, extreme heat, and air pollution, and replace over 30 acres of it with artificial turf, which increases urban temperatures, harms the environment, causes more injuries than grass, and contains cancer-causing PFAS.
The plan misrepresents community input. The majority who responded to the Conservancy’s surveys wanted more access to nature in FDR Park. They did not ask for additional athletic fields.
The Conservancy will be in charge of nearly all operations. Its stated objective is to make the park pay for itself by renting out the fields and other facilities. Even the newly renovated Welcome Center is to be an expensive catering hall.
The FDR Park Plan is a handover of public property to a private organization.
The park belongs to the people!
You can help save 100 acres of natural land in the city
Contribute to the Legal Fund
Save The Meadows has committed to providing financial support for South Philly neighbors who are suing to stop the FDR Park Plan. Please contribute — any amount helps! Donate here.
Sign the petition
Sign and share this petition to demand that Mayor Parker and City Council STOP the destruction of the FDR Meadows, South Philadelphia's only urban meadow and woodlands.
Choose your action
Join the movement, create an action! Contact your councilmember, the Mayor’s office, and your state legislators, and tell them why the FDR Park Plan must be revised. How to contact them.