Santa Cruz all-inclusive playground project holds public meeting

When completed it will be the first all-inclusive playground in Santa Cruz County and Sunday parents and kids were able to give input on what they want it to look like.

Kids made pictures of monkey bars and even a water slide, but the importance of Sunday’s meeting was to design a playground that all kids including 5-year-old Oliver can play on as well; Oliver is in a wheelchair.
“Right now when Oliver is playing with his sisters some barriers that we encounter are large bark pits or sand pits and so he ends up being on the outskirts of the play structure,” said Oliver’s mom Tricia Potts.

Potts says she doesn’t want her son to be excluded and that’s why she and others started the Santa Cruz Playground Project. The playground will include rubber surfaces and ramps for kids with wheelchairs or walkers.

The playground will be about 10,000 square feet and sit on a four and a half acre lot on Chanticleer Avenue.

The design portion should be complete in July and the group wants to start fundraising for this playground by November.

Project planners say if all goes well the playground, parking lot and bathrooms should all be open by 2017.

“We’re going to send it (the ideas) to our partner called Shane’s inspiration, they’re down in LA, they’re a non-profit that free of charge design the playground for us and will give us fundraising advice on how to go about raising those funds,” said Potts.

The project could cost about two to three million dollars. Right now, the closest all-inclusive playground is Tatum’s Garden in Salinas.