Lake Effect News

By LORRAINE SWANSON
Editor

More than 200 volunteers gathered at St. Margaret Mary Parish at 7318 N. Oakley to build a new playground for the parish school and West Ridge neighborhood.

It wasn’t unusual for Father Jim Barrett to find 20 kids from the neighborhood using the St. Margaret Mary Church parking lot for a soccer or football field. With few parks and playgrounds within walking distance of the West Ridge parish at 7318 N. Oakley, Barrett let the kids stay and play ball, as long as they didn’t break any car windows.

Last Sunday after mass, he found some children playing in the church’s recycling bins. “I told them, ‘you can’t play in there, you’re going to get hurt,’” Barrett said. “One little kid looked up at me and said, ‘but we don’t have anywhere to play.’ I told them to come back next week.”

This weekend, more than 200 volunteers gathered at 7318 N. Oakley to build a brand new playground as a gift to the parish’s elementary school and the children of the West Ridge community. Children peeked at the work in progress, watching the new playground take shape with spiraling slides, a zip line, a monorail, springy fire engines, a train, planters, picnic tables, and benches where parents can watch their kids play.

Even more remarkable, the playground did not cost one dollar of tax money, but was entirely privately funded.

“We have a lot of young families coming and buying older homes, and a lot of new development with condos and the like,” said Peggy Cunniff, mother of four St. Margaret Mary students. “From Ridge to Washtenaw, and Howard to Touhy, this is a huge area with no playground for the children.”

Volunteers steady a train for the new playground at St. Margaret Mary.

While volunteers, including parents, parishioners, neighbors and community organizations, built the playground in six hours on a Saturday, the project was three years in the planning. The brain child of parishioner Kim Marren, Marren learned about a Washington, D.C.-based, non-profit organization called KaBoom! which matches schools and needy organizations with funders to build play-spaces in park-poor areas.

St. Margaret Mary applied for a new play space with KaBoom two years ago, whose manifesto is, “A playground within walking distance of every child in Ameria.” KaBoom found a funder, but the funder was uncomfortable with the site being a Catholic church.

“We were going forward great guns on this project, but we lost out on being a KaBoom site. All that work sat in someone’s drawer.”

KaBoom, however, didn’t give up on St. Margaret Mary. The school and surrounding neighborhood met the organization’s criteria. There were no playgrounds within walking distance where young children could get to without having to cross busy streets and intersections.

KaBoom found another funder, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois that awarded a $75,000 grant to St. Margaret Mary. With funds earmarked from the parish, in all the playground cost $125,000.

“We had the space and the enthusiasm. It’s a huge process to do this,” Cunniff said.

St. Margaret Mary invited children from the West Ridge community to come and sketch out their ideas for a dream playground in July. Project managers from KaBoom’s satellite office in Chicago worked with parishioners in planning the logistics for building the playground. The playground had to be installed in a day by a volunteer work force.

On Saturday, volunteers worked at breakneck speed, painting, drilling, hammering, and assembling the new equipment, all made from sturdy, recycled plastic materials. Volunteers mixed 20,000 pounds of cement by hand in wheelbarrows and drilled holes in concrete to safely anchor the equipment.

Adam Arata, the KaBoom project manager, counted off the minutes left to the deadline as workers paced themselves to oldies rock music blasting from a nearby tent.

St. Margaret Mary principal, Peggy Finnegan, called the volunteer turnout amazing.

“We have a nice activity center with a gym and the blacktop, which is a good three-quarter of a city block to get too. All the recess takes place there,” Finnegan said, “but there’s nothing for children to play with or on.”

As volunteers raced to meet the six-hour deadline, 30 children from the parish marched to the playground carrying a homemade banner in a spontaneous parade led by the Blue Cross/Blue Shield “Blue Bear” mascot.

Their eyes widening at the new equipment, they squealed, “Can we play on it now?”

Meeting their 2:30 p.m. deadline, 250 bone-weary but happy volunteers from the parish and community dedicated the new playground. As for the neighborhood kids who were playing in the church’s recycling bins, they’ll be able to use the new equipment mid-week, after a rubberized matting and new wrought iron fence are installed on Monday.

“We had a great group of people, neighbors, parishioners, people who I never met before coming together to do something for the neighborhood,” Barrett said.

Scenes from a playground.