New Delridge playground: Date set, sponsor revealed, $ needed

| Delridge | West Seattle news | West Seattle parks

Another big development this morning in the Delridge Playground saga. As reported here last week, Delridge Community Center has a chance to get a new, safer playground for a dramatically reduced cost. Community volunteers jumped in — and this morning Betsy Hoffmeister reports, a date is set and a sponsor has come forward for the project involving an organization called KaBoom that, with volunteer and sponsor help, builds new playgrounds in a day. Here’s what we just received from her, including more on the help that’s still needed from the community right now:

I am thrilled to be the one to report that Delridge Community Center will be getting a new playground on JULY 17. The project sponsor is Bank of America! Thank you, Bank of America. Volunteers from BOA will be there on July 17 to help our whole community build our new playground.

Important dates:

On May 6 or so, we will be getting many more details on the scope of the project.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, MAY 12, a playground designer will be at the Community Center to meet with children and their parents to choose design elements for the playground. The kids who will get the most priority in participating in the design will be kids from the community, especially kids from the Community Center’s own preschool and after school care, as well as any kids from the SWY&FS preschool. I am not sure how many people there will be physical room for. The parents will have time to give input, as well. There will be translators.

After one week, KaBoom will send us three playground designs to choose from. After the Parks Department swiftly confirms that all three designs are safe and appropriate for our space, there will be significant public process to do that selection and make sure everyone is on board with the design.

What we need to accomplish in the next few weeks is raising $4000 extra to cover some extra bits. If you have volunteered to help with the playground, now is the time to contact me to get serious!

Very excited!
Betsy Hoffmeister
North Delridge Neighborhood Council

You can reach Betsy at betsy (at) hoffmeisters (dot) com.

Betsy May 4, 2009 (5:25 pm)

oh I forgot, donations are tax deductible. checks can be sent to DNDA, 5411 Delridge Way SW
Seattle, WA 98106 please say clearly for NDNC/PLAYGROUND. Thanks friends!

Mike D. May 4, 2009 (8:51 pm)

Thank you Betsy! Thank you KaBoom! Thank you Bank Of America! And Thank You Seattle Parks! I will be ready to pitch in and help on July 17th:)

delridge neighbor May 4, 2009 (8:59 pm)

I am so glad to see this come together! Thanks to Betsy and the many other volunteers who have worked on this. I hope that we will get a good representative turnout from the kids and families for the community process. This is really an opportunity to make a well-used park work even better — for young kids especially, but all kids will benefit from the updated equipment. My two year old will love to have equipment that he can actually climb onto (as opposed to the current climber which I have to lift him onto and hover nervously around).

We will be there for the workshops and to help install in July. Thanks again!

Lisa K. May 5, 2009 (7:58 am)

THANK YOU SO MUCH to all who brought this together: Betsy and the Delridge CC staff, Seattle Parks, and ESPECIALLY KaBOOM! and Bank of America. I am very excited for July 17th! In addition to being ready to get to work, I’ll bring lemonade and cookies!