Christine Larsen guides her 3-year-old daughter, Freya, on monkey bars at the Dahl Playfield, where she led a community effort to overhaul the playground.
Forty people showed up on a hot August day this past summer to lay down sod as part of a restoration project at Kenmore Elementary School.
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Who Can Help? If you’ve looked wistfully at your own neglected park or civic space and want to take the initiative to make a change, here are some people who can help.
CITY OF SEATTLE
Neighborhood Matching Fund – The NMF offers four ways for citizens to improve their communities: The Small and Simple Projects Fund (up to $15,000); Large Projects Fund (up to $100,000); Tree Fund (no cash, trees are provided); and Neighborhood Outreach and Development Fund (up to $750). Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2008, the NMF currently awards about $3.2 million annually to people-powered projects. For more details: www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods.
Seattle Parks Foundation A private nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping Seattle’s green spaces thriving, the Seattle Parks Foundation makes grants to neighborhood park initiatives, funds major parks projects, and donates trees, benches and ADA-accessible swings. For more details: www.seattleparksfoundation.org.
KING COUNTY
Youth Sports Facilities Grants – These matching funds are awarded to rehabilitate or create youth sports fields and facilities in King County.
Community Partnerships and Grants Program – Another matching fund program, this one allows community groups to pursue new projects or enhance existing facilities at county-owned properties.
WaterWorks – This King County water quality block grant program makes awards of up to $60,000 to community groups working to protect or improve watersheds, streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands and tidewater areas. For more details: www.metrokc.gov/parks.
SNOHOMISH COUNTY
Youth Amenities and Recreation Development (YARD) – These matching grants are awarded to nonprofit community groups to make park improvements – from school playgrounds to ball fields. Ten awards were made in 2008 for a total of nearly half a million dollars. For more details: www.snocoparks.com.
PIERCE COUNTY
City of Tacoma Neighborhood Council – Community development block grant funds are available for Tacoma residents and grassroots neighborhood organizations within the eight neighborhood council areas for small-scale physical improvement projects. www.cityoftacoma.org/Page.aspx?nid=101
On sunny afternoons, I like to take my sons to our neighborhood elementary school playground. They can ride their bikes, climb on the play structures, run around on the athletic field and pick blackberries from the bushes. In all the hours we’ve spent enjoying that space, I never stopped to think about the cost of maintenance or who would make improvements. I just assumed the school district would handle that.
I’m asking those questions now, however. The school needs new playground equipment, and the district can’t pay for it. I’ve found myself in the middle of a community effort that is increasingly common these days – figuring out how to pay for places to play.
Getting Started
Christine Larsen, a Seattle mother of three young children, decided to take matters into her own hands a few years ago when she noticed that the park in her neighborhood between Wedgewood and Ravenna was in desperate need of attention. “I walked my kids down to my local park, and it was just a wasteland,” she says. “It looked abandoned.”
Not one to wait around for others to get things done, Larsen picked up the phone and called the city’s Department of Neighborhoods, who told her about the Neighborhood Matching Fund. She gathered her neighbors and got to work, forming what would become Friends of Dahl Playfield.
Eleni Ledesma had a similar experience in her Queen Anne neighborhood. “I used to walk by this park all the time, and it was always a shame to me that I couldn’t take my kid to that park because it wasn’t safe,” says Ledesma. Four years later, Ledesma is the co-chair of the Big Howe Improvement Project, or B-Hip.
At my neighborhood school, Kenmore Elementary, Stacey Denuski has taken on the challenge of rehabbing our deteriorating playground. When the school district’s risk management team told us that much of the playground equipment was not compliant with current codes, they also let us know that the district would remove the old equipment, but did not have the money to replace it.
Naturally, the idea of losing our playground didn’t go over well with the school community, so Denuski volunteered to lead the project for the PTA. “It’s the oldest school in the district, and some of that equipment was installed when the school was built,” 52 years ago, Denuski says. “We really just need a safe place for kids to play.”
Pay for Play
The Northshore School District is sympathetic. “We are very grateful for the members of our community who dedicate themselves to helping our schools and our students,” says district spokeswoman Susan Stolzfus. “The state does not provide any funding for playground equipment, and the local funding for school renovation and modernization projects, approved every four years by Northshore voters, is normally used for pressing needs in the classrooms.” While the district does make sure that kids are safe on the playground, they count on PTAs and community groups to purchase new equipment.
Kenmore Elementary Principal Nancy Young understands the dilemma the district faces. “They’ve been supportive of our grassroots effort all the way up the food chain,” she says, noting that school budgets are stretched thin. “When there are limited dollars, I don’t know that they can really justify large chunks of money going to playground equipment.”
Denuski agrees. “If I have to pick between a playground and education, I pick education,” she says. “I’d rather have my kids have a math curriculum.”
Of course, that’s not a choice anyone wants to have to make. Kenmore Elementary is in a unique position, in that it’s the first Title I school in the district – a designation reserved for schools with a high percentage of low-income students – and the playground is the only play area for children in the community’s downtown core. A loss of the playground equipment would mean that many area residents would face losing the one place their children can play safely.
New playgrounds can cost well into six figures. “The biggest hurdle? The fundraising,” says Denuski. “It’s just a hard time to be asking for money.” With budgets tightening at school district offices and parks departments around the country, citizens have to get creative about raising money. But there’s not a bake sale in the world that can raise enough to pay for a playground.
Getting Help
Luckily, there is help along the way. Pamela Kliment is a Neighborhood Matching Fund Planner for Seattle Parks and Recreation. She has her hands full with projects all over the city, including both the Dahl Playfield and Big Howe efforts. “I’m with them when they hire contractors and at all the public meetings,” Kliment says, noting she has a deep respect for the community groups she works with. “These people do all the work. … I really just coach them through it.”
The Neighborhood Matching Fund provides community groups with the financial means to improve their neighborhoods, but requires those groups to match the amount contributed by the city in time and dollars. Larsen and Ledesma both started with Small and Simple grants of up to $15,000, which enabled them to hire landscape architects and get their projects off the ground.
Once the playground design is selected, groups go on to apply to the Large Project Fund, which makes grants of $15,000 to $100,000. Like the Small and Simple grants, the Large Project Fund requires the community to match the contribution with cash, volunteer labor and in-kind contributions.
King County also has a number of funding programs available, including the Youth Sports Facility Grant program. “We award matching grants to city agencies, school districts and community groups that partner to make youth facility improvements,” says Program Manager Butch Lovelace. The program will make grants of up to $75,000 for projects from playgrounds to rowing facilities.
In Snohomish County, citizens can apply for Youth Amenities and Recreation Development (YARD) grants from the Parks and Recreation Department. Like the Seattle and King County programs, YARD grants require a match of cash and volunteer hours.
It Takes a Village
“You never realize what you’re biting off until four years later when you’re finally celebrating your project,” Larsen says.
It may be a long process, but there’s immense value in bringing the community together to renovate a park or build a playground. “When you involve real mothers and real children, it makes it better every single time,” says Kliment. “The sweat people put into the project saves money and builds community. … Even kids can help – there are really tasks for everyone.”
King County emphasizes the community element as well. “When a community group is leading a project, businesses are more inclined to help,” says Lovelace. “And there’s a great deal of pride in ownership. It really brings the community together.”
“People working side by side get to know each other and support each other in so many ways,” Larsen says. “We had our ups and downs, we had little battles here and there, but you have to let that chaos work itself out.”
Ledesma, too, was encouraged by the outpouring of support from her community. “Businesses really rallied behind us,” she says. Still, she cautions people to be flexible. “You have to remember that people are volunteers, they come and go and you have to be fluid with that,” she says.
At Kenmore Elementary, we’ve been working hard to bring the broader community in to help with our playground initiative. Over the summer, two Eagle Scouts (former Kenmore Elementary students) repainted some of the equipment and worked to bring the school’s infamous “big slide” into compliance, a project that involved restoration of a hillside. When the time came to roll out new sod for the hillside, 40 people showed up on the hottest day of the summer to help, working for eight hours. Even the kids were able to help, rolling out sod and cheering the fire truck that came to water the new hill.
Sweet Rewards
Larsen’s Dahl Playfield project was “a project that was waiting to happen,” she says. “It needed to be done; people were already thinking about it. I just came to it with willingness.” The community’s efforts paid off, with a new children’s play area, a new basketball court, athletic fields, a restored wetlands area and a public art installation that doubles as a play area.
The Big Howe Improvement Project is nearing completion as well, with the infrastructure and main play structure installed. “Our next phase is to install a structure for the little children and a second picnic table,” says Ledesma. Her goal was to have the park completed by the time her son turned 8 years old, a goal she just met. “Of course, now when I take him to the park he wants to play in the tree,” she jokes.
Kliment loves seeing a finished park, but to her “the best part is seeing everyone succeed.”
Hopefully, I’ll be able to see the Kenmore Elementary community succeed in the coming years. With examples like Christine Larsen and Eleni Ledesma, I know it can be done.
Playgrounds aren’t the only projects civic-minded people are taking on.
Ravenna Glen ‘Arterials First’
Gretchen Bear loves her home in the Ravenna Glen area but not the road that leads to it. The stretch of Ravenna Avenue between 85th Street and Lake City Way is a busy arterial, but it lacks safe pedestrian access. She decided to approach the city to request a sidewalk, starting with a letter written in June 2002. More than six years later, Bear is still knee-deep in the project. She’s held public open houses, walked city officials along the road and applied for a Large Project Fund grant.
Project Seattle Pools
The city of Seattle has built only one public swimming pool in the last 30 years. Project Seattle Pools is a grassroots effort to change that. Now spearheaded by Elizabeth Nelson, the group has convinced the city to conduct a feasibility study, and garnered some support on the city council for further study on building new pools and upgrading old ones. With any luck (and a lot of hard work) public pools will be included in a Parks Department levy effort in 2010. To learn more about Project Seattle Pools, visit www.seattlepools.org.
Jennifer Donahue is a freelance writer and mother of two, who lives in Kenmore.
