PARKS & RECREATION/Cooperation results in community-built playground

When Webb Bridge Park opened in Alpharetta, Ga., in 1998, it had no playground facilities, a fact that did not distinguish it from other area parks. “We got so many calls from people asking where the playgrounds were,” says Mike Perry, director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. “But we really had nothing.”

As a fast-growing Atlanta suburb, Alpharetta has had difficulty building enough recreational facilities, especially playgrounds, for its residents. “It seems that organized sports get more of the city funding,” says John Gnoffo, an Alpharetta resident. “Most municipal recreational programs focus on baseball fields or soccer fields and not playgrounds.”

The city had budgeted about $50,000 for playground equipment for Webb Bridge Park, as it does for each park, but residents decided to add to that fund and create an elaborate recreational space for children. Called the Webb Zone, the playground hosts hundreds of children each day.

As the project got under way in July 1998, the city’s recreational commission appointed a playground committee, chaired by local residents Connie Cheren, Wes Williams and Barbara Hallowell. The committee’s main job was to design the facility and raise the funds for its construction.

Gnoffo, a local architect with Cerulea, quickly joined the effort by donating designs for the playground. He consulted local residents (including children) and municipal parks and chose a variety of elements for the site. He then priced out the elements so that the committee could select the ones it wanted to include, based on its budget. Some of the elements needed to be built from scratch, while others could be purchased and installed.

At the same time, Cheren and her team of volunteers were busy raising money and campaigning for materials donations. For example, they: * solicited corporate donations; * organized garage sales, rallies and door-to-door visits to residents; * sold fence pickets, engraved with the donor’s names, for placement around the playground; * sold decorative wooden squares, painted by the children or families who purchased them, for placement along the park’s fences; and * placed donation buckets in area schools. By the time the playground was ready for construction in June, the committee had raised $170,000, including $8,000 donated by school children. Through a competition, area children also gave the playground its name.

The playground’s final design included a wooden play area with slides and swings, a grassy patch, a sand play area, a butterfly garden, paved areas, a man-made stream, a shaded pavilion and walkways. Volunteers worked alongside hired contractors and city workers to build the facility, completing i t in six days. Altogether, about 700 people took part in the project.

The project’s success is attributed in part to an atmosphere of cooperation and generosity, Cheren says, noting that employers gave volunteers time off and local restaurants provided food during the construction phase. “The commitment of the people in this community was amazing,” she says.

Webb Zone is the second community-built playground in Alpharetta. The first, located at Wills Park, was built in 1997 with the help of Leathers & Associates, an Ithaca, N.Y.-based architectural firm that designs playgrounds and manufactures components. Based on the success of those projects, the citywill continue to support community-built projects, Perry says.