The main playground at Potomac’s Greenbriar Local Park sits cordoned off with caution tape and two temporary fences. It’s a gorgeous Tuesday, perfect for swinging, climbing and sliding, but inside the barrier, there is no laughter coming from the charred husk of a structure.
Since May 7, the playground has sat silent, with bits and pieces of burned debris from the structure littering the ground below.
“The [county] fire marshal has deemed [the fire] to be arson,” Montgomery Parks Deputy Director Gary Burnett said Tuesday. “They’re following up, we also have our park police and the county police also trying to follow up … not a lot to go on at this point.”
According to Burnett, the playground was a total loss. He said the parks department expects to receive a cost estimate detailing repair and rebuild expenses on Wednesday.
“The initial cost estimate is somewhere around $1 million,” Burnett said. “I think that’s actually going to be a little light when we’re all done but it’s going to be somewhere around there.”
Burnett also said Montgomery Parks is determining the cost to remove damaged portions of the playground that are cemented into the ground.
Greenbriar’s main playground will remain closed until further notice. Moving forward, the parks department hopes to reopen the site next year.
“It’s gonna take us a while,” Burnett said. “I would say that sometime over the winter or by next spring we’re hoping to have that playground back in operation.”
The Greenbriar playground was built in 2016 during park renovations and was selected as a Bethesda Magazine Best of Bethesda winner in 2018. Known as the Piedmont Play Fort, it featured curly slides and a soft rubber ground cover.
“Unfortunately, this is not the first playground we’ve had vandalized,” Burnett said. “It just takes time for us to gather resources up to actually go back and make those repairs.”
Though the main playground is closed, Greenbriar’s smaller playground for children ages 2 to 5 was not damaged by the fire and remains open.
