Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Playground idea

[mamaflee (mamaflee]

I'd like to share my personal experience with Playgrounds since this topic
came up!

Our intentional community is rather new, (going on 3 years, and still just
starting a lot of the building) and is very different! We are huge, 530
rental units alone, and are starting building townhomes and single family
homes this summer. We're huge, so a lot of what we do is going to be
different from more traditional co-housing and intentional communities.

Last summer, we built our playground behind the community center. It was the
most awesome expeience I've had here so far. What we did was have a couple
of different playground companies send us material. Then we had a meeting
and read through it and wrote down the positive's and negatives of their
stuff. Eventually, we settled with one company, and also we had a great idea
of what we felt our playground needed, colors we wanted, etc.

That company had a rep come out and meet with us. We told him we wanted a
playground that had one side geared towards "little" children, and one for
the "older" children. And he gave us a design.

We opted to build it ourselves. We dug the ground out, poured cement,
clamped, and everything. It was just amazing. Wonderful, fun! The kids all
came out and watched or helped, and it really wasn't that hard! They gave us
a whole book that took us through it step by step. The rep came out and
fielded questions the first day of building. So we had a little help if we
needed it, but we didn't.

That great part is the pride we have in that playground. Everyone takes care
of it. The kids talk about how they "helped build" it, or saw it built. It
is a great way for children to be a part of the community. And, it saved us
40% off of the cost of the playground!!! That is a *lot* of money!

I would definately build it yourselves if at all possible. I would do that
every year if I had the oppertunity!

Amy
Member of HighPoint Community http://www.highpointcommunity.com
Institute for Community http://www.instituteforcommunity.org