Golden Gardens Playground Renovation

Seattle Parks and Recreation is going to spend $500,000 to put in a new playground at Golden Gardens park in Ballard.  Kids love slacklines.  I see some possibilities here.  The benefits are manifold.  First off, kids would get a more safe (rubberized surface if they fall) and more accessible (lower + shorter) slackline (or slacklines!) that would be up 24/7.  We adult slackliners would have fewer kids monopolizing our lines — something I want to stress I (and most people) don’t mind, but can at times be a little frustrating if you’ve got thirty minutes before work and you head to the beach to get in some slack-time and you’re mobbed by kids who all want to jump and hang on your line.  So I see this as the best of both worlds: adult lines for adults, and kid lines for kids.

We attended the 2hr site and equipment meeting tonight and raised the possibility of including slacklines in the design.  I was happy to see that several of the proposed designs already included rope or net walks, so I feel like a slackline isn’t a very big leap (no pun intended) from that premise.  And there would be nothing wrong with a rope walk, except that the new playground will be right by where we all currently slackline (the treegrove), so if whatever the kids have seems “less fun” than a slackline all the playground will do is encourage MORE kids to come over and ask to use our lines.  And with $500,000 available, the $20 cost per slackline (left up permanently) would be no burden, haha.

I gave a brief write-up on slackline, costs, equipment, safety and negligence concerns to the administrators of the meeting.  We’ll see where it goes.  The playground is due to be installed in 2011.