One Saturday late last month the rain clouds went away and a dozen or so little kids lined up to use the swings at Harold’s Playlot in Hyde Park. A bunch of kids waiting to use some swings may not sound like much, but a few years ago that play lot, in East Hyde Park just north of 53rd Street and east of Hyde Park Boulevard, was filled with debris and rarely used.
The committee decided to take advantage of the Park District’s soft-surface program, a five-year plan to resurface the city’s 550 or so play lots with wood chips. On November 20 Sherr wrote a letter to Park District superintendent Robert Penn, and two months later Penn promised to resurface the play lot in 1991. “The soft-surface program is intended to make play lots safer for kids,” says Natalie Gongaware, a landscape designer for the Park District. “We put in about 15 to 18 inches of wood chips, which compacts to 12 inches. That will cushion the fall if a child falls from any equipment.”
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The suggestions ranged from basketball courts and a putting range for golfers to swings and slides arranged so that it would be easier for parents to watch and supervise their children. “We talked about the pros and cons of all of these things and decided that we should stick with basic play-lot features,” says Leigh Breslau, Sherr’s husband and the architect who drew up the original play-lot scheme. “Based on what the parents told me they wanted, I tried to create a series of play areas–or outer and inner rooms–with equipment arranged by age group.”
The group got a big break when it received a grant from Regents Park, a nearby high-rise complex. “It was a three-to-one matching grant,” says Sherr. “They gave us one dollar for every three dollars that we raised, with $20,000 being the maximum that they would give. Their offer gave us credibility. It meant we had the potential to raise as much as $60,000.”
“I know Hyde Park has some advantages over a lot of poor neighborhoods when it comes to projects like this. But I think our results can be emulated elsewhere. The most important thing is to have perseverance. You’d be surprised what you can get done with a central core of hard-working, relentless people.”
