Up for Debate: Is Silver Spring's Fake Grass Cheap?

IT'S A TURF WAR over ... turf. Specifically the artificial turf in the downtown Silver Spring area that's the butt of many jokes, but makes many local butts quite comfortable.

A quick refresher for those just joining the story: In the center of revitalized Silver Sprung, there's a patch of artificial turf that forms a temporary park. A new civic space will eventually rise on the fake grassy patch at Ellsworth Drive and Fenton Street. What exactly it'll become is still up for debate. Some want an outdoor ice rink, even though there are complaints that climate change will render such a facility useless.

When the turf was first deployed, The Post's David Montgomery reviewed the "fescue"-grade SoftLawn, made of polypropylene:

As an oasis in the city, as a place to walk barefoot in the park, it — um, how to put this? — well, to be perfectly frank: It works.

This is hard to admit. On close inspection, the surface has the tactile properties of one of those Teflon-safe dishwashing scrubbies. The "blades" of "grass" are short and tightly packed, like the brush cut of a poodle.

But did Silver Spring get the good stuff for its temporary low-maintenance town common or is the fake lawn more Putt-Putt quality?

Recapping a public meeting on the future Silver Spring civic center earlier this month, blogger Silver Spring Scene wrote that a turf supplier said Montgomery County got "the cheapest stuff on earth." Not so, says supplier Rob Farley of Jupiter, Fla.-based Synthetic Turf International, wanting to set the record straight:

Just a point of clarification, I never said that the county chose the "cheapest stuff on earth." It is actually a very high quality surface, but it isn't meant to withstand the traffic it has had. The current turf is actually a putting green surface, not filled all the way with sand. If we had kept filling it, Silver Spring would have the world's largest putting green. They had a budget and that particular variety of turf was what made sense for all concerned. I never imagined it would still be here 21 months later. That wasn't the plan.

Got it? Fake grass isn't "cheap." It just has varying degrees of high quality. In that case, it might be time to help the National Park Service trim maintenance costs: Should we pave the National Mall over in polypropylene?

» "An Inconvenient Rink" [Silver Spring Singular]
» "Silver Spring's Synthetic Lawn Is a Sweet Success" [WaPo]
» "Special Report: The Shape of Rinks to Come" [Silver Spring Penguin]
» "Turf Wars Takes to Round House Theater" [Silver Spring Scene]
» "Clarity on the Turf" [Silver Spring Scene]

Photo by Kevin Clark/The Washington Post

Posted By Michael Grass at 11:25 AM on May 15, 2007 Tagged in Architecture , Free Ride , Maryland , Montgomery County , News , Out & About , Silver Spring , Top Stories

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