It was a busy day for about 200 volunteers as they worked on a one-day makeover for a Grand Rapids city park. The City, Amway, the Friends of Grand Rapids Parks and the Kaboom Organization joined forces on Thursday to revitalize a neighborhood park space.
“This is a really incredible opportunity.”
That’s David Marquardt , Director, Grand Rapids Parks and Recreation. And he says that opportunity that brought about 200 volunteers together enabled them to put a new face on an old, outdated space.
“We’re able to bring a new, completely revitalized playground space to Eastern Elementary playground and park space that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do to this degree.”
For six hours on Thursday, the volunteers worked to revamp the spot at 820 Easter Avenue Northeast, just north of the Medical Mile. The park space used to be park space for an elementary school. The city still owns the play yard and Marquardt says they wanted to revitalize it to make play easy for children and families in Grand Rapids.
“This park space which we now own, has really been neglected for a number of year because of the transition from schools to city. So there hasn’t really been the funds aligned for revitalization for this space. So, the city is coming together with Kaboom corporation and Amway, the friends of Grand Rapids Parks and the Amway corporation is bring a lot of corporate volunteers to really, in one day’s time put together a brand new playground in a space that has desperately needed one for years.”
Earlier in the summer, children from the surrounding area came together to draw their dream playground and this play ground is based off their drawing. It will provide more than 800 kids a safe place to play.
This is the 20th playground that Kaboom and Amway have built to ensure communities have good play spaces for kids.
