Bye-bye, blacktop

If your familiarity with Lafayette Elementary goes no further than having seen its brick exterior along the busy block of Cali (photo below) just south of Admiral, across from Safeway — you probably don’t know about the sad shape of its playground — cracked old blacktop, no grass except for the weedy kind poking through those cracks.

lafayettefront.jpg

All that’s about to change; the city’s just issued a permit for replacing some of that blacktop with grass, part of a playground renovation project that’s been years in the making, and the groundbreaking celebration is set for one week from Thursday — the Lafayette PTA wrote us to say everyone’s invited (9:30 am June 21). They’re still collecting $ for future phases of the playground; click this e-mail link to contact someone for more on that; click ahead to see the official invitation for next week’s event:

Invitation.jpg

2 Replies to "Bye-bye, blacktop"

  • Jan June 11, 2007 (12:23 pm)

    Theat’s wonderful. My daughter went to Lafayette in 4th and 5th grade. She is now 26, and I doubt much has been done to that playground since she was there. Children need to know that they are cared enough about by the school district that these things don’t deteriorate like this.

  • Gina June 11, 2007 (1:34 pm)

    I hope there are plans for maintaining the grassy areas. All of the grassy parking strips (45th, Lander and California) are weed infested currently. Will the school district be maintaining, or will it be parent volunteers?

    Thank goodness the wall ball will be moved away from residences and over by the school. Never could figure out why they placed them 5 feet from houses. (bang, bang, bang, all 25 kids in the gym class wonking balls against walls.)

    Will the playground be for school use only? Last time there was a playground improvement, school authorities locked and chained all the entrances, blocking the legal right of way through 44th. The principal said it was to prevent vandalism. The gates were almost ripped off their hinges by annoyed teenagers in retaliation.

    It is a good looking plan. The playground has basically been the same since Lafayette was rebuilt after the earthquake, and the school district covered the ravine and little creek with fill.

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