Turnkey Park gets KaBOOM! makeover

More than 200 volunteers rolled up their sleeves last Friday to help build a new, kid-designed playground at Turnkey Park.

The city of Kent Parks, Recreation and Community Services, the Kent Parks Foundation, and the national nonprofit KaBOOM! with help from their corporate partner the Walt Disney Company turned a once rundown Turnkey Park into any child’s dream.

“This is super exciting,” said Nicole Rustad, program director of Disney Interactive. “The Walt Disney Company really believes every child should have a fun place to play so we’ve come together with the community of Kent to help build this playground.”

At the end of March, project managers from KaBOOM! met with students at East Hill Elementary to help design the playground. On June 7, those sketches came to life as 65 community members, 68 Disney volunteers and 43 Kentridge Key Club members alongside the KaBOOM! volunteers built a whole playground in just one day.

“It’s like a volunteer coordinator’s dream,” said Victoria Andrews, special programs manager for Kent Parks. “(All) these people want to come play with us.”

As people hauled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of wood chips, others mixed cement or held jungle gym poles in place, all in an effort to update the old, outdated playground.

“It was at the end of its life,” Andrews said. “There weren’t even any swings. It was sad, and this is a community with about 1,300 kids of all ages here.”

This isn’t the first instance where KaBOOM! and the city of Kent have partnered together to create a new play space for local kids. In 2011, the nonprofit helped build a new playground at Tudor Square Park also. In both cases, with the help of the community and volunteers the parks came together without a hitch in just a matter of hours. Now Turnkey Park, complete with slide, jungle gym and swing set, is ready for kids to explore, imagine and play.