BERTHOUD — Parents everywhere hear the call of the wild, especially in the summer months, and one of the most common refrains is, “Can we go to the park?”
For many parents it might be a relief, a chance to shoo them out of the house like a miller moth. Yes! Go to the park! But for Lauren Bowling, that refrain is anything but a chance to unwind. It means work. It means nearly two hours in the car. It means a whole afternoon.
Lauren and her husband, Richard, have twin boys they call walking miracles. Miles and Mack had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome and were week-to-week starting about 12 weeks into her pregnancy, Lauren said, until they were delivered by emergency cesarean section at 28 weeks. The babies scrapped and survived, and the boys are now age 7. Mack is as able-bodied as they come and Miles has no cognitive problems, which gives the Bowlings oodles of gratitude. It really could have been much worse.
But Miles has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around. This means not every park will work, including all the available playgrounds in Berthoud, where he lives with his parents, Mack and an older brother, Braxton.
This will change by next spring and possibly a lot sooner, thanks to the Berthoud Adaptive Park Project. The park will be Berthoud’s first inclusive playground of any kind, but this one will be one of the most inclusive in northern Colorado, with a surface he can roll on and swings, monkey bars and a merry-go-round, all adapted so Miles can have fun, too. Berthoud broke ground on the park on May 29.
“The monkey bars are built so kids in wheelchairs can pull themselves through,” Lauren said. “Miles will be able to play on monkey bars with other boys.”
Berthoud launched the park thanks to the Bowlings, who raised money for it with a ridiculously successful lemonade stand (this year’s annual event raised more than $13,000, for a total of $53,000 over four years) and the help of Can’d Aid, a Longmont nonprofit launched in 2013 by craft-brew-in-a-can pioneer Dale Katechis. It also took some haranguing, the kind parents of disabled children learn to do as their offspring grow up enough to explore the outside world and realize some things aren’t the same for them.
Haranguing, even a few years ago, was how inclusive parks were built. Now parks departments realize that an adaptive park doesn’t mean building a ramp so kids can sit in their wheelchair while other kids run by them. Denver, in fact, tries to be inclusive with every new park.
“Now people are realizing that accessible is not inclusive,” said Juliet Dawkins, who started LuBird’s Light Foundation with Jason, her husband, for their daughter, Lucia, after her nickname. “Even if you have a smooth surface, a wheel-able surface, if you don’t have a piece of equipment for them to play on, what’s the point?”
Most of Colorado’s larger cities have at least one inclusive park, and the movement is trickling down to towns such as Berthoud, with a population of 12,000.
Yet parents still need to show up, speak up and make sure they are heard, Bowling said, despite emphasizing in her speech at the groundbreaking that she couldn’t have done it without the help of many others. She had to help push community fundraising for the park toward its $1.6 million goal, after all.
“There were times I got intimidated by our grand goal, and anytime that happened, someone in the community reached out and would reinvigorate me,” Bowling said. “But I don’t think it would have happened without me pushing. It feels gross to say that, because so many helped lift me, but no, I don’t.”
Where you belong (really)
This year’s theme of the National Recreation and Park Association is “Where You Belong.” That’s intentional, said Kara Kish, director of parks and recreation for the city of Loveland.
“A lot don’t feel they do belong,” Kish said. “But in the last five years, universal access has been the new standard. The primary drive is the commitment to be in service to everyone.”
Cities across the country, including Loveland, Denver and many others, have revamped their recreation departments to not only offer programs specifically for those in disabled communities but adjust any class or sport to make it accessible if someone requests it.
Parks are a harder commitment, but they are working on it. Loveland’s spent the past decade, Kish said, to make all its parks compliant with the American for Disabilities Act.
ADA standards, however, aren’t always fun, and that’s why parks departments are looking beyond them. Loveland broke ground April 22 on the 160-acre Willow Bend Natural Area and Universal Access Playground, which will feature the city’s first universally accessible playground — 12 acres. Loveland hopes it will be ready by spring.
“Universal access goes beyond physical limitations,” said Bryan Harding, Loveland’s parks and recreation planning manager. “It runs the whole gamut. We won’t have everything for everybody but we will have something for everyone.”
The park will feature play equipment designed to be used with other people, with a concrete slide, for instance, that’s extra wide and doesn’t cause static that can knock out pacemakers and bother those with hearing difficulties, as well as bathrooms with oversized stalls and adult changing tables. There will be tools for sensory play as well, which can be soothing for those with autism and other similar issues. There’s even charging stations for mobility devices such as electric wheelchairs.
Concrete slides are a new concept, but it’s likely able-bodied kids will like them better as well, Harding said, since they don’t get nearly as hot as metal or plastic slides. Inclusive swings and merry-go-rounds are still loved and used regularly by everyone as well.
“Inherently when you improve upon something,” Harding said, “it serves everyone better.”
“We want people to be together”
Denver Parks and Recreation now considers whether a park is universally accessible and inclusive instead of buying a piece of equipment and calling it good.
“It’s a conversation we are going to have every time a park is in the planning stage,” said Owen Wells, the district park planning supervisor for Denver Parks and Recreation. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with families and advocacy groups. They’ve helped us understand what makes parks inclusive. We’ve been learning over time.”
Sometimes parks departments were the opposite of inclusive even when they meant well. Buying a single piece of adaptive equipment can be anything but inclusive.
“The idea is we want people to be together,” Wells said. “It doesn’t meet that goal if a kid is playing on a piece of equipment in a section of the park by himself.”
Parks and recreation departments and the equipment providers that serve them nationwide are doing their best to learn, Wells said. Denver’s focused on inclusive playgrounds for a bit now — Wells said it’s been a focus since he started working for Denver four years ago, and it was before he got there — and it’s now so commonplace that even towns such as Berthoud do their best.
“I think we are in a moment where the industry is evolving a little bit,” Wells said.
There are also limitations, Wells said. Some of Denver’s 175 parks were built during World War I and aren’t easy to retrofit, as accessible equipment can be much larger. Cost can also be an issue, although that may depend on the cities, as some said the equipment they found was a lot more expensive. Wells agreed that adaptive equipment costs more but also said fitting the equipment in older parks was a bigger constraint.
“Is it backbreaking? No,” Wells said of the cost.
The fight continues
Yet with all the thinking on a citywide level about inclusive parks, there are still people fighting for more of them. Sarah Spiller, a physical therapist for Academy School District No. 20 in Colorado Springs, has a hard time recommending a park for her families in Colorado Springs.
“Our closest one that’s accessible in our area is 30 minutes away,” Spiller said.
There are three inclusive parks in Colorado Springs, she said, including Panorama Park, which she calls “wonderful.” But from the school district where she works, it’s 35 minutes away.
Colorado Springs wants to work with her, she said, but said it is hamstrung by tens of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance on its parks. Many parks were built in the early 1990s, she said. But the city told her that if she could raise money for it, the city would match her contribution.
She’s also spoken with an HOA that might be willing to donate money for a neighborhood park if they could use the grounds for free for events like Easter egg hunts. Maybe parks companies would donate a piece of adaptive equipment.
“I need to create an organization and meet again with parks and rec,” Spiller said. “We will see.”
Spiller’s push is the kind of initiative that LuBird oundation wants to see, even if Dawkins does agree that parks and recreation departments are taking a lot more initiative on inclusive parks.
“Whenever there’s a new park, generally cities will present plans to the public, and there are questions like, ‘Do you want a regular swing or a support swing?’,” Dawkins said. “Parents should advocate for that.”
There are certain pieces that LuBird pushes for nearly every time a new park gets built, such as surface merry-go-rounds and supportive swings, things that Dawkins calls “a slam dunk.”
“It’ll be awhile before every park is inclusive every time,” Dawkins said. “But at the minimum, you can have those pieces and add more from there.”
The park in Berthoud won’t be ready for kids until late fall, and it’s possible the rubber surface won’t be ready until the spring. They are planning a grand opening for Memorial Day.
Bowling sees the park less as a way for her to avoid driving long distances as a real chance for Miles to be a typical boy whenever he wants. He can ask his mother if he can go to the park, and Bowling, finally, will be able to shoo him out the door.
“He’ll be able to roll out the garage door and go down the block and play safely with his friends,” Bowling said. “That’s something I wish for every child.”