City officials, including Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, broke ground on the new Eaton Elementary School playground on June 1 – a $1.6 million renovation project that is to be completed in two phases.

The real work of phase one began at the end of the school year. For several weeks, workers for the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization (OPEFM) were busy installing the new equipment.

Then they were busy uninstalling it.

“Does anyone know what happened at John Eaton playground to the playground improvement project?” one member of the Cleveland Park listserv wrote today.

For the past few weeks the workers have been busy assembling new, brightly covered playground equipment. (Starting to work as early at 6:00 am on weekeday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, to boot! — a clear violation of the DC noise ordinance.)

Now for the past day or so, the workers have been busy removing the newly installed equipment. As of Friday morning, August 14, it is back to square one — nothing is installed.

Is this another DC boondoggle?

A spokesperson for OPEFM told City Desk that the equipment had indeed been taken down, but stressed that it will rise again

“Yes, the playground equipment was taken down. That was because of a technical glitch of the installation,” he said. “The bottom line is there’s going to be more installation time in the installation. These things happen all the time. Our contractors are on schedule to complete the installation” by the first day of school.

So look for it by then.

Below is a rendering of the playground-to-be, provided by OPEFM: