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The Rotary is raising money to add a water play area to the All Persons Playground at Clayton Park.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 31, 2003
BRANDON -- The Rotary chapter that donated nearly $135,000 for the All Persons Playground at Clayton Park plans to spend another $30,000 on a water play area that can be enjoyed by children with or without disabilities during the sticky heat of summer.
All Persons Playground, which opened last spring at the 21/2-acre county park, features a stage, swings, ramps and interactive toys designed so that children in wheelchairs and walkers can play alongside other youngsters.
Now the Brandon '86 Rotary is ordering thousand-pound concrete animals that spray water. Rotary member and past president Randy Kizer said his chapter by mid-summer will install three to four of the figures, which come as seals, porpoises, pandas and dinosaurs.
The mini water park is one more improvement to what residents and some county officials consider to be Hillsborough's best park. It also comes as local parents, mirroring a national movement, raise money to build more playgrounds that can be enjoyed by children with disabilities.
From Boston to Atlanta, parks are opening with playgrounds that make disabled children feel at home, rather than excluded from all the fun. In South Tampa, New Suburb Beautiful mother Stefani Busansky and a group of volunteers are raising $300,000 for a playground at MacFarlane Park that will feature ramps and play areas for blind children.
Boundless Playgrounds, a 5-year-old nonprofit organization based in Connecticut, is helping with the design. The group wants to build a minimum of 1,000 accessible playgrounds in the United States -- enough so that every disabled child in the country is within an hour's drive.
Already, the group has helped build 50 playgrounds, said Dianne Noth, senior director of operations for Boundless.
More than a decade after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, most U.S. playgrounds still offer minimal access to children with physical, developmental and emotional disabilities, say designers with Boundless. The disabilities act states only that playgrounds with more than 20 pieces of equipment must have wheelchair ramps.
"It's not just about the wheelchairs and the ramps," Noth said. "This is about integrating the entire environment. Our goal is to have all the kids playing together."
The playground at Clayton Park is the biggest and most expensive Hillsborough County has ever created, said Joel Jackson, the county's manager of park planning, design and construction.
It includes swings, made larger than usual and equipped with a bar that comes down to secure children who can't hold themselves in. It also offers a sandbox, bathrooms and covered gazebos for birthday parties.
The project cost the county more than $600,000, about $170,000 of which was covered by state grants, said Jackson. The Brandon '86 Rotary raised an additional $135,000, with donations coming from Brandon Community Hospital and other area Rotary chapters.
Brandon resident Tim Gregory goes to the park at least once a week with his four children -- 5-year-old triplets Noah, Nathan and Nicole and Nicholas, 3.
"My kids understand now why those special swings are like that," Gregory said. "In their mind now, they don't see those kids as any different. They see the other children want to have fun, too, even with their limitations."