SAN ANTONIO — When hundreds of volunteers started gathering at Kennedy Park Wednesday morning, they were surrounded by plenty of parts. Their job was to build a brand new playground for west side kids in six hours.
Breaking into teams with names like My Little Pony, they set out to divide and conquer.
Team leader Jason Fonseca said, “We're going to be building playground components, and with everybody's dedication and hard work, it will be done fairly quickly.”
District 5 City Council representative Shirley Gonzales said, “This is very exciting. There were $250,000 in the 2017 bond program for Kennedy Park and the community here has been very involved with the redevelopment of their park.”
With help from KaBOOM!, the Carmax Foundation and volunteers from USAA, they worked to make the dream come true.
Gonzales said the new playground will have specialty areas for different ages of children.“These new types of play scapes are designed very thoughtfully for how children develop,” she said, adding “There's some quiet spaces where they can hide inside and also places they can jump off of, and of course, in a completely safe environment.”
Smiling broadly, Marisa Perez-Diaz, with the Edgewood ISD, said elementary school children helped with the project by suggesting design elements back in February.
“They were able to draw out their dream playground, so it's really exciting to see their ideas come to fruition,” Perez-Diaz said.
Steven Gillmer is the San Antonio Carmax General Manager. He said this project is his sixth and he was happy to be moving mulch because his usual job is mixing concrete. He said involvement in this initiative is life enriching. “That just makes me feel really good,” he said.
Amy Larson of KaBOOM! said the build is a little like controlled chaos. "It feels a little chaotic from the outside, but everybody is focused on their own task,” she said.
Volunteer Tess Imboden laughed with her team as she assembled a spinning tic tac toe play station. “This is a lot more fun, for sure,” Imboden said.
Volunteer Tiffany Lee wielded a huge hammer and said she was happy to get her second workout of the day, having run four miles earlier.
Kennedy Park is on the west side on Roselawn near General McMullen and more information can be found here.