Inside the Battle to Save the P3 Training Facility at Pier 40

By Anthony J. Paradiso

The Pier Park and Playground Association Facility (P3) has used an indoor space on the south side of Pier 40 as a youth baseball and softball training facility for the last 25 years. The P3 training facility has been the Greenwich Village Little League’s (GVLL) “home base” as League President Toni Ann Bonade wrote in a letter to parents.

The P3 facility has been where kids who play in the GVLL attend hitting, pitching, and fielding clinics daily throughout the spring and summer baseball and softball seasons and during the winter off-season, as well. Its programs run year-round both after school and during weekends. P3 also offers a summer-long drop-in day camp for children of all ages and skills.

The league website says that in 2024, over 1,300 girls and boys played baseball and softball with the non-profit GVLL. The P3 training facility is an integral part of the downtown youth baseball and softball community that is accessible to everyone regardless of age and skill.

The Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) is threatening to revoke the permit that allows P3 to operate in the indoor space on the south side of Pier 40. As was reported in the February issue of Village View, P3 has been told they have to “vacate by July 15.” This would disrupt not only the GVLL but the Downtown Little League and Stuyvesant High School.

Bonade wrote a letter to Noreen Doyle, the president and CEO of the HRPT, in which she illustrates the relationship between GVLL and P3. “GVLL partners with P3 to provide affordable, year-round baseball and softball training to more than a thousand families from the neighborhood every year.”

For parents, P3 is more affordable than sending their kids to “private day camps” which, according to Bonade’s letter, cost “thousands of dollars per week in the summer.” On the other hand, P3 summer camps cost $450 per week and a P3 after school program costs “less than $300 for an entire season.”

To Bonade, P3 is more than a baseball and softball training facility. It has a purpose that does not meet the eye. “The space is not only a training facility, it is a community center where neighborhood baseball and softball families from all economic strata can send their children to learn and practice baseball and softball. Hundreds of kids visit the P3 facility each week throughout the year to develop not just athletic skills, but also learn values like teamwork, perseverance and good sportsmanship.”

The list of uses that GVLL has for the P3 facility is extensive, but here are three of the most important ones that Bonade mentioned in her letter.

1. “GVLL uses the P3 meeting room and P3 coaches to help organize, distribute and collect baseball and softball equipment at the beginning and the end of each baseball season. This is a huge undertaking especially in Spring when we have more than 60 teams to organize and get set up.”

2. “In the run up to our main Spring season, GVLL engages P3 to run winter workouts for GVLL players inside the Pier 40 facility. These programs start in December and go through March. These are included in the cost of GVLL registration, and we have over one hundred kids attend each week.”

3. “Each Fall, GVLL is the only Little League in NYC that offers Fall Ball program for kids of all ages (4 through 17) from anywhere in the city. This program is organized and run out of the P3 facility by P3 coaches.”

P3 is a place to hold winter workouts and a fall baseball program that kids of all ages (4 through 17) living throughout the five boroughs can attend. Furthermore, GVLL’s president is not aware of another “affordable, community-oriented indoor baseball and softball training facility in the city.”

People are behind every organization and P3 is no different. Bonade goes on to say that there are “a number of senior, experienced baseball and softball coaches” who have been at P3 for years. In addition to the senior coaches there are “a group of college-aged kids who played baseball in high school or college,” many of whom “recently emigrated from the Dominican Republic.”

HRPT CEO Noreen Doyle responded with a letter addressed to the GVLL leaders, parents and players, which cited “significant permit violations related to unauthorized construction at Pier 40” as the reason for the removal of P3’s permit. As a compromise, Doyle confirmed that P3 will be allowed to conduct its spring season and “to use Pier 40 fields this summer and beyond for camps and other programs.” Doyle also assured the league’s leaders, parents and players that “Hudson River Park will do” its “best to work through this challenge and transition together.”

GVLL parents and others will have a chance to voice their support for saving the P3 training facility at a Community Board 2 meeting slated for Wednesday, March 5 at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will take place at Middle School 297 at 75 Morton Street. Let’s hope that the community rallies around P3 and saves their training facility which is a home away from home for the baseball and softball players in GVLL, Downtown Little League and at Stuyvesant High School.