Community Corner

Magnolia Playground Makes Its Post-Sandy Return

Kaboom, a national nonprofit, and JetBlue Airways spearhead park reconstruction project along with 200 volunteers in Long Beach.


An estimated 200 volunteers pitched in to rebuild Magnolia Playground on Saturday, after the beachside park in Long Beach was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy last October.

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Kaboom, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, and JetBlue Airways funded the bulk of the project, awarding the City of Long Beach  a grant to rebuild the park. Surf 4All, a local nonprofit, also helped spearhead the project that sparked a local committee and a Facebook page devoted to the site’s redevelopment. 

Since its inception in 1996, Kaboom has worked to ensure that there are great places throughout North America for children to play within walking distance of their homes, Mike Vietti, a communications manager for Kaboom, told Patch. Since then the organization has constructed more than 2,200 playgrounds across the continent, according to its website.

“Kaboom is dedicated to giving kids the childhood they deserve by bringing play to those kids that need it the most,” Vietti said. “KaBoom believes very strongly that kids need to play actively every day, at home and school and in their local communities.”

After Kaboom officials heard Long Beachers tell tales of how the playground was destroyed after the storm, they saw it is an ideal opportunity to help the community recover. “From that standpoint, it was a perfect match: we have an area that served a large number of children, especially during the summer, and that number increase due to the location of the playground,” Vietti said of the park at Magnolia Boulevard and West Broadway.  

Beginning in 2005, JetBlue partnered with Kaboom to help create these play spaces for children, and with the construction of the park in Long Beach on Saturday the tandem have built 17 playgrounds together, said Icema Gibbs, JetBlue’s director corporate social responsibility.

“We don’t just work here and operate from the area airports, we also live here,” said Gibbs, who noted that Sandy impacted many JetBlue crewmembers, including several from the Long Beach area. “We are neighbors in the community and we want to do our part.”  

Gibbs said the playground reconstruction in Long Beach is part of JetBlue-Kaboom team's plans to help rebuild New York. The team looks to identify two other Sandy-impacted park or playground sites to redevelop in New York or New Jersey.

“JetBlue actually made the commitment to Kaboom to build three playgrounds in 2013 in areas that were affected by Superstorm Sandy last year,” Vietti said.

The project in Long Beach officially kicked off on “Design Day” in March, when organizers gathered several children in a room, gave them sheets of paper and asked them to draw their dream playground, Vietti said. Kaboom took their drawings and incorporated them into the design of the new park. The construction portion of the rebuild started in late April, when a retaining wall was built where the park meets the beach, as part of the city's effort to rebuild its 2.2-mile storm-damaged boardwalk, and local artists last week started to paint the wall, as part of the other preparations leading up to the one-day rebuild on May 18. 

Asked about the cost of the project, Vietti said: “We don’t disclose the cost of our playgrounds, but the support from JetBlue, the City of Long Beach, Surf4All and the community has been unbelievable.” Vietti said that the local residents and the city could add additional facilities and items, such as a bathroom or shadding, to the playground as they see fit.

As part of a bid to resurface Magnolia Playground and six other parks in Long Beach, the City Council on April 16 voted to approve a $208,892 contract with KJB Industries to install rubberized safety surfacing at the parks. Jim LaCarrubba, the city’s commissioner of public works, said that the resurfacing at Magnolia would follow days after the rebuild. 

Some of the features of the new Magnolia Playground include:
·         
  • Dragon Castle Slide
  • Slither Slide 
  • Sunken Treasure Hunt Activity Panel 
  • Adventure Tube 
  • Silo Climber 
  • Stern Climber 
  • Horizontal Loop Ladder 
  • Swingsets 
  • Wave Rider 
  • Vaquero (motion play playground equipment – the separate circular apparatus near the swings on the 3D design)


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