Kids' wish list for proposed Esplanade playground: zip line, please

By Sara Brown, Town Correspondent

A meeting about a privately funded Esplanade Playground elicited feedback from some of the project's most important stakeholders: Children between 5 and 12 years old, a group that playground advocates say lacks sufficient play space.

Around 25 youngsters attended the Tuesday afternoon meeting at Hill House, sitting on a blue play mat for a presentation by project manager Rob Adams of Halvorson Design Partnership. Adams outlined plans for the 10,000 square foot playground that would include play structures, a reading space, plantings, and art installations (the kids suggested that a roller coaster or movie theater be added to the mix).

A community group, Friends of the Esplanade Playspace, has created an endowment to pay for the playground. Now, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation is working with the group to make the playground, which would be located on the Esplanade by the Fiedler footbridge, a reality.

The kids gave their input—and took the time to make some shadow puppets—as Halvorson gave a slideshow of plans for the playground. Some hits: a climbing toy with ropes, a tower, a slide and a hammock; a rope bridge, a spinning toy, and totem logs for rock climbing. A zip line was deemed “awesome," and kids voted blue as their preferred playground color.

Not so popular: a toy consisting of large pieces of pipe (“bo-ring”), the foursquare court (kids asked about soccer), and the pieces of rubber or bark that are typical in most playgrounds (“They get in my favorite shoes,” one playground conniseur noted).

The goal of the playground, Conrad Crawford, Director of Partnerships for the DCR, told the kids, is that “people like you—and your brothers and sisters and friends—can have someplace to play.”

A few hours later, Adams went over the playground designs for a sparse crowd of adults, including Tani Marinovich, one of the Beacon Hill parents who has spearheaded the effort.

Marinovich said that the Friends of the Esplanade Playspace have talked to students in schools around Beacon Hill, and more than 300 neighborhood children wrote letters to the DCR supporting the playground.

If plans continue on schedule, the ribbon-cutting for the playground would be in July 2011.