PLAYGROUND

“We have identi ed a need in our community for a playground,” said Ted Greene, Beaver Ranch’s park manager. “We are trying to bring a state-of-the-art big-time playground to serve all communities. One of the biggest drives is to make it inclusive and accessible.” e current playground’s equipment is more than 20 years old and covers about 3,000 square feet of space. e proposed playground will be 12,000 square feet. e organization and JCOS have a huge emphasis on accessibility for adults and children throughout the park, Yates said, and JCOS has been very supportive of the playground initiative.

“When we started looking at this, we said, ‘Let’s shoot for the stars because there is no public playground here other than at Beaver Ranch,’” said Wyatt Yates, board president of Beaver Ranch Community Inc.

Yates said the Conifer Area Council’s yearly surveys have shown that the community wants a playground that is available all day. Area schools’ playgrounds cannot be used by the public while school is in session.

Je co Open Space, which owns the park, is working on improvements to Beaver Ranch, including more than doubling the number of trails and preparing to improve trailheads and more. JCOS will prepare the site for the new playground equipment.

A lot of research has gone into preliminary designs for the playground.

Renee French, who serves on the playground committee, said it was the plan from the start to make sure the new playground would be ADA accessible. Beaver Ranch board members toured other playgrounds in the state to see what children were playing on and what they like, she explained.

“We also talked to groups that brought day-care kids to playgrounds,” French said. “ ey would travel miles to go to certain playgrounds, so we wanted to know what structures the kids liked and didn’t like.”

Yates emphasized the Beaver Ranch board’s desire to provide a great playground for the community.

“Our big thing is we think everybody should be able to enjoy the outdoors and not have limitations in terms of accessibility to the greatest extent possible,” Yates said.