A Place to Play in Only a Day

by Bruce Schimmel

After a decade of community meetings, years of pleading with the city and weeks of chasing details, Imanni Wilkes sounded certain that even a driving rain couldn't keep this playground from being built in a day.

"Oh, it's absolutely happening," Wilkes chirped over the clamor of a gathering crowd. Posters had announced that the playground at 47th and Sansom would be rebuilt in one day. And by 9 a.m., the pocket park was indeed filled with hundreds of volunteers dressed in bright orange — if somewhat damp — T-shirts.

Wilkes is a community organizer for The Enterprise Center, the lead development agency for this neighborhood. Along with the Walnut Hill Community Association, Neighborhoods Now and the Connelly Foundation, they raised some $94,000, and attracted the aid of a national nonprofit called KaBOOM! Since 1996, KaBOOM! has helped build more than 1,500 "instant" playgrounds — pursuing their creed that every child needs a safe place to play.

Today, the adults here were also primed for a good time, rain or shine. Some volunteers wore hats made of stuffed animals. The sodden legs of toy cats, dogs and ducks bounced about their ears, as they hammered, drilled and dug.

For this one-day build, more than 150 neighbors joined with Home Depot volunteers and a platoon of young adults from City Year. They bolted together swings, assembled picnic tables and yanked the weeds out of a community park that had turned toxic.

"It was a mess," said 10-year-old Brandy, who lived up the street. "It was dirty. It was dangerous. I broke my arm there."

KaBOOM! previously helped to build a couple other playgrounds in Philadelphia. But this was their first on public land.

Building on public land brought special challenges, say organizers, who spent years cajoling the city's bureaucracy. The pace quickened after local Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and the city's Department of Recreation signed on.

For one longtime resident, wearing a hot pink crown crested with feathers, working alongside her neighbors on this playground was thrilling. "To see all these people working together," she said, "gives me goosebumps."

It gave me goosebumps, too. It seemed the very icon of American civility, as old and young, light and dark, worked side by side.

And, sure, it would have been better if the playground equipment were less plastic, less generic and had been made locally. Still, as kids painted murals under mothers' watchful eyes, and neighbors shared pizza and laughs, there was reason to hope that this place wouldn't be neglected again.

"We're putting together plans to take care of this playground," said Wilkes, conceding that maintenance would be a challenge.

As well it might. Because compared to the long, hard work of maintaining a community, building a playground in a day is a mere walk in the park.