Park Built for Disabled Kids, Too

Park Built for Disabled Kids, Too
By Joshua Akers - Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 6, 2003

It took three years of effort and coordination to build, but a new park in Rio Rancho has garnered national attention in trade magazines and with children and parents throughout the city. The park, in the Enchanted Hills neighborhood, boasts the only Space Net, a rope pyramid for climbing, in the United States and play areas that are not only compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act but also integrate play between children, including those who use wheelchairs.

"The park is designed so any child could use it," said PJ Perry, acting director of Rio Rancho Parks and Recreation. "Even the surfacing ?- surface limitations are not part of our plan." Recycled automobile tires, which have been shredded, colored and coated so they are nontoxic, line the ground below and around the equipment. Perry said the surface is safe if a child were to fall, and it can easily be navigated by wheelchairs.

The park opened in January after three years of negotiations and effort between the city, the neighborhood, local businesses and the manufacturer of the play equipment. Todd Hathorne, president of the Enchanted Hills Neighborhood Association, said the park is an example of city and community cooperation. "It is a premier showcase for Rio Rancho," he said. "It shows how community cooperation can get things done faster and cheaper."

In the upcoming months, the park will appear twice in Parks and Recreation Magazine, Resources Management Magazine, Landscape Structures Magazine and Today's Playground Magazine. It recently appeared in Landscape Architecture.

Perry said the park was custom-built based on community input and participation. "Everything about this park has community members interwoven," he said. "The best part about the buy-in from the community is you get people who care about this park."

Community volunteers spent between 150 and 200 hours working at the site clearing brush and assisting with landscaping, Hathorne said. A botanist who lives in the neighborhood brought a group of students from Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute to help identify the various flora already on the site. With that knowledge the community helped design a park in which the minimum number of trees were removed and a 150-year-old juniper was left standing, Hathorne said.

Students from the University of New Mexico contributed a master plan for the 20-acre site for free. A local Boy Scout also has made landscaping the park his Eagle Scout project, Hathorne said.

"It's a nice park we all enjoy," Hathorne said. "We're also invested in maintaining it and keeping it up."

The play equipment sits on four acres of the site while 16 acres have yet to be developed. Rio Rancho's approach to parks is an attempt to give citizens different options, Perry said. Excerplay, a Cedar Crest company specializing in playground equipment, helped install the equipment at the park, Perry said. David Smith, a representative for the company, said Rio Rancho's approach to parks was proactive. "Instead of looking through catalogs and ordering item B-12, they talk to the neighborhood," he said. "They do not take the cookie cutter approach to playgrounds, and it's a benefit to the community."

Another feature of the park, situated just off N.M. 550 and Santa Fe Hills Road, is its view of the Sandia Mountains. Smith said the color scheme and the way the park was situated were intended not to interfere with those views.

On Monday afternoon, around 15 children were playing in the park as parents watched from benches taking in a mild spring afternoon. Perry walked with a camera crew filming and shooting still photos for the magazines National Parks and Recreation, Landscape Structures and Resource Management.

"This is the community's park," Perry said. "We do everything big and for our community."