How would you like to go to a playground and just sit there watching? No, that wouldn’t be any fun at all. Yet until the concept of a Boundless Playground came along, children with disabilities often simply sat on the sidelines, unable to participate.
Happily, times are changing and there is a lot to celebrate.
The Grand Opening of a new Boundless Playground in Florida happened Monday, March 6, at the Baseline Road Trailhead in Ocala. Grand openings are a grand excuse for setting out cookies, inviting heads of departments from as far away as Tallahassee, and handing out oversized scissors to cut the ceremonial ribbon.
The neat thing about this opening, at least to me, was arriving to find the playground in full use by moms and children who had no idea there was a Grand Opening about to happen. And this was on a Monday. Imagine the weekends.
Lee Niblock, bureau chief of Marion County’s Community Resources Bureau, calls them “SUV moms”, and he says it with affection. On any given day, drive by the parking lot and it is full of SUVs.
The playground is at the main entrance to the Baseline to Marshall Swamp Trail, part of the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway. Opened in 2002, there are five miles of paved trails and here, at the trailhead, are restrooms and covered picnic pavilions. It is a partnership between the office of Greenways and Trails and the Marion County Commission.
Before the playground was built, the ever-vigilant government bean counters had pegged usage of this trailhead at an average of 3500 to 3600 people a month. That includes walkers, joggers, skateboarders, bicyclists and dog walkers.
Then the Boundless Playground, two years in the making, had a soft opening in December, 2005. A soft opening is one where there are no cookies, no reporters, no ribbon cutting. In a soft opening news that something even exists gets around by word of mouth.
Within a month of the playground’s soft opening, use of this trailhead shot up to more than 10,000 people a month. The difference is playground users.
How’s that for word of mouth?
Putting a Boundless Playground in this spot was an idea that started when Mickey Thomason’s vehicle broke down outside Tallahassee.
“I had time to wait while it was in the shop and read some literature about Boundless Playground, I thought it would be good for Greenways and Trails,” recalled Thomason, the Central Regional Manager for the Office of Greenways and Trails. He pitched the idea to his bosses in Tallahassee.
Funny you should ask, came the reply, because Governor Jeb Bush has just said he wants to see 50 Boundless Playgrounds in Florida during his term. Of course there is no money to do it, just figure it out, find partners and prayer wouldn’t hurt.
Oh, and did we mention building Boundless Playgrounds, with all their ramps and ways to make things accessible, are not cheap?
Along came an angel disguised as Ellie Schiller, director of the Felburn Foundation. Traditionally, their mission is preserving nature. But that didn’t stop Ellie from writing a check for $250,000.
“This is our first Boundless Playground,” Ellie said at the ribbon cutting. “We felt handicapped children ought to have the opportunity to experience nature.”
The Department of Environmental Protection, under which Greenways and Trails resides, put in $50,000 to finish the job.
“One of my first jobs as a government employee 17 years ago was deauthorizing the Florida Barge Canal,” said Colleen Castille, Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. Those barge canal lands became the Cross Florida Greenway and a small piece of that Greenway became home to a Boundless Playground. Amazing how things work out.
“Nationwide there are 85 Boundless Playgrounds and we have 8 of them in Florida,” Castille said. Well, let’s see, if Bush is counting, and I’m sure he is, we still have 42 more to build in Florida.
Boundless Playgrounds started in 1997, inspired by a memorial play area created to honor Amy Jaffe Barzach’s son who died at nine months of age in Connecticut. A Boundless Playground is an extraordinary place where children and adults, with and without disabilities, can participate in play that develops skills for life. To know more, visit their Web site at www.boundlessplayground.org
“Thirty years ago the word disability was synonymous with segregation,” said Shelly Brantley, director for Florida’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities. This is a brand new agency, created by the Legislature last year.
“There is so much for children with disabilities to gain here-self esteem, celebrating differences and similarities, enjoying the same rights as others,” Brantley said. “If disabled people are not part of our community, we are missing out.”
And then, the speeches finished, they used really huge scissors that actually worked to cut the ribbon. It’s official. The Boundless Playground had a Grand Opening.
A small sign on the grounds says it is for children ages two to five. But don’t tell that to the SUV moms, they are too busy sliding down the slide, showing their kids how it is done, and having a grand time.
©2006 Lucy Tobias.
Lucy Tobias is a freelance writer in Ocala, Florida. She is working on a book “50 Great Walks in Florida.” She rides bikes at the Baseline Trailhead every week, and watched the Boundless Playground grow over time from a dirt pile with a fence around it to a finished playground being enjoyed by families.
note: the first photo shows Colleen Castille, Secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection pushing Jack Wheeler of Ocala, age 3. Jack, his brother and his mom were visiting the playground during the Grand Opening.
the second photo shows a mom demonstrating slide technique to her two children. Who is having the most fun? Photos by Lucy Tobias ©2006