Parks board presses for bathroom access, raises concerns about 42-foot parking encroachment for new senior/community center

The Birmingham Parks and Recreation Board on April 1 urged city project leads to secure public bathroom access in a proposed senior/community center and raised objections to a parking layout that would move a lot roughly 42 feet into Saint James Park.

Board members and parks staff spent more than an hour reviewing schematic “test-fit” plans that show how a three-level center — with the gym and pool partially below grade and community spaces above — would sit beside the park. Scott Lewinsky, director of public services, described the design work as a step to “explore adjacencies and noise” and to show how rooms, entries and parking would be arranged.

The board’s central concern was loss of green space. Several members said they would accept reduced park turf only if the city-obtained tradeoffs were meaningful to park users — in particular, an accessible public restroom in the new building that the public could use without an onerous check-in process. “If we’re willing to give up parking lot space because then that’s one less thing that the parks has to pay for and maintain,” a parks board member said, urging staff to…