After 35 years, you could say a playground as heavily used as Mozart needs an upgrade.

The City of Boston administration would agree, and the first meeting to that end was held on Dec. 18 at the Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF).

More than $1.7 million has been budgeted by the Boston Parks & Recreation Department (BPRD) and as Project Manager Kevin Bogle said, the ultimate goal is “whoever you are, the park is for you.”

Ground Inc. is the landscape architect, and Olivera Berce, studio director, gave a brief background of the playground built in 1959 to replace the tall, gabled, brick building that housed the Lowell School; itself replaced by the flat, low brick Kennedy School.

Unique among all the playgrounds in Jamaica Plain, from Parkman at Forest Hills to Jefferson at Hyde Square, Mozart has an active, almost proprietary, constituency in the Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF).

Berce pointed that out on the PowerPoint timeline with the year 1991 when the playground was last renovated with the involvement of the then-nascent HSTF, who in those days met on the third floor of the MSPCA at the time.

In 2007. Berce explained the stage was added, the playground replaced, and the basketball court repainted.

Project landscape architect Yuhan Ji succinctly described Mozart as “not just a playground but an important space for community expression.”

Yuhan went through the customary site analysis of the 0.81-acre playground: picnic and chess tables, swing sets, performance space, basketball court, playgrounds, the “Duarte” and “Reach” sculpture and what Yuhan called “flexible space.”

Also to be considered, Yuhan said, were seating, lighting, tree health and surface conditions.

Bogle said that the Juan Pablo Duarte sculpture will remain in place during construction, “a permanent location is part of this conversation.”

No one from the Dominican Foundation of Art and Culture, which promoted the bust, was at the meeting.

Yuhan opened the floor and one resident from Sunnyside Street said, “almost none of my neighbors use it [Mozart]. It’s mostly young guys who play basketball,” he said. “You have to make it comfortable for the whole population, you need to find that out, something there to attract them.”

Another speaker named Ed said he “lives across the street, second floor” disagreed.

“The playground is used by little kids all the time,” he said. “It’s heavily used. The Kennedy School – they have a bike program.”

Another neighbor said the basketball court needs resurfacing. He wanted a better court.

Here Bogle added something new: the basketball court is a separate contract.

“It’s part of Parks [Dept.] priorities. The Various Courts Program determined by decision makers,” he said. “One contract, city-wide, lighting, resurfacing, backstops and posts.”

“The basketball court is not going to be moved, it’s different funding, ”Bogle said.

Resident and prominent Latin Quarter proponent Jose Masso wanted to move the direction of the planning, picking up on Yuhan’s statement that Mozart was ”an important space.”

“This [Mozart] is the doorway to the Latin Quarter,” he said. “The hub of the Latin Quarter. Vision it. Vision it from that perspective.”

“Make the park a destination. A special place, the (crown) jewel. Mozart as a destination point,” Masso said.

The audience quickly picked up on this thought.

“Everything needs to be a work of art,” a woman said. “Design the play equipment with Mass College of Art students. You can make this so much more.”

Art has been an integral part of the playground since 2008, as Berce pointed out on the timeline. In 2008 the HSTF collaborated with Roberto Chao on the first mural on the east wall.

Then in 2009 the HSTF got a NE Foundation for the Arts grant and commissioned Douglas Kornfield to create “Reach,” a piece made up of five eight-foot stainless steel tubes set between the performance stage and the swing sets.

Chao returned in 2022 and with Task Force students created a new mural for the long, east wall dedicated in November 2022 – https://tinyurl.com/ms89w6rs

This was damaged in the early fall of this year during repair of the wall on which the mural hung. “It’s now in storage,” said Brenda Rodriguez Andujor, deputy director of HSTF. “The brick wall was collapsing.” But Andujor assured everyone: “There will be a new fence up… There will be another wall put up for the mural.”

The audience quickly picked up on Masso’s thought of Mozart as a destination: “The Dominican Festival and Puerto Rican Festival start there; the Latin American Festival [ 2016]; the Puente concerts every summer; National Night Out.”

“This can be place of magic,” said one speaker. “The ethos of the park is art, an art park. It will lift up the whole community.”

Yuhan said another planning meeting is scheduled for February. Bogle added that he anticipates the playground reopening in the spring or summer of 2028.