P3, aka Pier Park & Playground Association, a non-profit that has run baseball camps and afterschool programs at Pier 40 for decades, will no longer have a permit for the indoor space it operates on the south side of the field. Both Greenwich Village Little League and Downtown Little League are petitioning the Hudson River Park Trust to keep the organization in place, but P3 has already been told it must vacate by July 15.

In a letter to GVLL leadership, the Trust said that while it values youth baseball and the league and all it does for local kids and for building community at Pier 40, it “had to make the extremely difficult decision to terminate the longstanding permit held by the Pier Park and Playground Association, Inc.” The letter went on: “We had no plans to make any changes to P3’s status prior to this incident and made this determination based upon significant permit violations related to unauthorized construction at Pier 40 that now must be repaired for safety. Please know that this decision was not made lightly.”

The Trust declined to elaborate on the nature of the unauthorized construction other than to say it was significant enough that the Trust could not responsibly ignore it.

P3 will be able to use the Pier 40 fields this summer and beyond for its camps and other programs, since the permitting for the fields is a separate process.

P3 had a permit from the Hudson River Park Trust to use that indoor space exclusively, but they did not pay rent or fees to the park for its use. Increasingly, GVLL and Gothams, the citywide travel baseball team, ran their operations out of the space. DLL also used the indoor space for coaching and practice, but did not have any direct arrangement with the Trust for its space.

“The P3 facility along the south side of Pier 40 has also functioned as home-base for GVLL,” the league’s president wrote to parents, noting that she will be urging the Trust to reconsider. “It is where managers go to pickup and drop-off equipment. It is where we train coaching staff on safety, hold manager meetings and organize tryouts. It is where our kids attend hitting, pitching, catching and fielding clinics after school and during off-seasons.”

“Shutting down the P3 facility would cause serious damage to our little league and the broader downtown NYC baseball and softball community,” the board of DLL said in a letter to parents. “We believe it will significantly limit the programming offered by Downtown Little League.”

There is a lot of overlap with the three baseball organizations as well as Gothams — folks serve on both boards of the non-profits, for example, and P3 and Gothams are both run by the same person — so it’s no surprise that the leagues are all trying to keep P3 in place. In other words, it is tangled.

The future of the space has not been determined, but the Trust’s president, Noreen Doyle, said in her letter to GVLL that the park will not seek a commercial use there in the future, but rather something that will serve the community and likely youth sports.

“We are committed to listening to our community about how this space can continue to serve the youth sports community that is such an integral part of both Pier 40 and Hudson River Park overall,” she wrote. “We will be working with Community Board 2, our Advisory Council, and league leadership on the best way to begin that conversation…We certainly recognize the incredible and unique value that the indoor space at Pier 40 has provided to our baseball and softball communities over the years.”