Cape Cod Kidz

Truro kids design their town playground

Truro kids design their town playground
Community volunteers will build new play center later this month

   How one Truro child envisioned the proposed playground.

By James Kinsella

Say you're a kid growing up in Truro, and an adult comes to you and says that you get to design a playground for the town.

First off, you're probably going to want some basic playground stuff, like swings and slides and ladders.

Then, because this is a Truro playground, you're going to want to include something from the town, like Highland Light.

And then, because this playground should be REALLY COOL, it should have something really cool - like a shark eating a boat.

Come the end of October, that's exactly the kind of playground the children of Truro will have.

In what is described as a five-day blitz, from Wednesday, Oct. 22 through Sunday, Oct. 26, volunteers are scheduled to build Puma Park, a community playground, next to the new Truro Community Center on Library Lane.

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Using donated materials, the volunteers will put together a playground created from the ideas of the children of Truro.

The playground, which will cover 7,500 square feet, is being built on town land near Library Lane off Standish Way, between the town library and the new community center, which is slated for completion in November. Organizers estimate the project will cost about $120,000.

The name and logo of the playground is a reference to the legendary Pamet Puma, a big cat long rumored to wander the wilds of Truro. The puma's image will be incorporated into a rock-climbing wall at the playground. Truro schoolchildren chose the name for the park (which also is the name of the school mascot) by majority vote.

Co-organizer Rebecca Townsend said the effort to build the playground started close to three years ago.

"Truro lacked a community playground," Townsend said. "We're the only town on the Cape not to have one. We researched it."

She brought the need for the playground up at a "meet and greet" event held by Curtis Hartman, who was running for a selectman's seat at the time. Hartman asked her help in making it happen. He was elected to the board; he and Townsend became co-organizers of the playground project.

Further research revealed that playground construction is expensive, so the organizers decided to involve the community in donating materials and building the playground.

To make the child-designed playground a reality, organizers turned to people who have done a lot of this sort of thing, Leathers & Associates of Ithaca, N.Y.

Back in March, a designer at the firm, John Drew, came east to meet with the students of Truro Elementary School.

Drew met and spoke with every child. In turn, the children gave him their individual drawings of an ideal playground.

By that evening, he had drawn up a schematic and presented it at a community meeting.

In early September, another Leathers designer, Dave Iannello, came to Truro to meet with the various playground committees working on different aspects of the project.

Iannello has worked on many community playgrounds across the United States. Treehouses and castles, he said, are recurring motifs.

"There are a lot of spins on monsters," Iannello said.

And like the Truro children with their lighthouse and voracious shark, children in other communities include local themes. One rural playground has a giant, mechanical farmer robot with a hollow center through which the children can climb. An Alaskan playground has three-dimensional dogsled teams.

Although the materials to build the playground already have been purchased, organizers continue to welcome offers of volunteer help during the construction and donations of money to help pay for the materials and to establish a program to maintain the playground.

Townsend is excited about the playground's promise.

"It's going to be a great little spot," she said. "The outpouring of community spirit is unreal."

Truro is by far the smallest town on the Cape, with a year-round population of about 2,000. Yet Townsend said many people in town still don't know each other.

And that's another reason to build the playground: to provide a center for the community.
"We're trying not only to build a playground, but to build a community as well," she said.

Although the materials to build the playground already have been purchased, organizers continue to welcome offers of volunteer help during the construction and donations of money to help pay for the materials and to establish a program to maintain the playground.

Click on the image below for a larger version of the construction diagram.

More information about the playground is available by calling Townsend at 508-349-0442, e-mailing her at rebecca@truroplayground.com,or visiting the Web site at truroplayground.com.