HONESDALE, PA — With a clean slate now present where Honesdale’s Central Park playground once stood, community organizers are thinking big when it comes to designing a future replacement. 

“It’s a lot harder if we’re thinking small and trying to scale up from that,” said Lisa Glover, one of the founders of the People’s Playground Project (PPP), encouraging participants at a Saturday, January 17 community workshop to put their boldest ideas out into the world. 

Honesdale Borough removed the playground equipment from Central Park in October, following a report that indicated the tire mulch used as ground cover posed risks to the park’s trees. Community members came together after that removal to form PPP, a vehicle for public involvement in the process of designing a replacement. 

Only a handful of community members turned out for the January 17 workshop, but PPP has already been active in soliciting input. In addition to two pop-up workshops held earlier in the week, PPP circulated a survey which gathered over 200 responses.

The survey and the workshops began to outline what might be included in the playground, and what the playground might look like. 

When asked what theme the playground should have, if any, respondents selected in their top three choices “generally local nature” (46 percent), “the Stourbridge Lion” (32.6 percent) and “woodlands” (31.9 percent). (Write-in answers included “flowery summer wonderland,” “dragon” and “bugs!! or sea animals.”) Respondents also identified bathrooms and some kind of fence or safety barrier as important, with 81 percent of respondents saying bathrooms were somewhat, very or extremely important and 66.4 percent of respondents in favor of some level of fencing. 

‘Smells like teen spirit’

In the free response portion of the survey, several respondents expressed concern for the safety of the new playground equipment. Specific concern centered around teen residents of Honesdale who might be attracted to the equipment. 

“Let’s have cameras or some way of watching the equipment to make sure no one destroys it or defames [sic] it,” reads one response. Reads another, “cameras for distroyment [sic] done by high school kids.”

“There’s nothing here for 13-17 year olds,” reads a third. “No offense to that age group, but they tend to loiter and do bad things when they’re bored. I think the age range needs to change 9-14. After that they don’t really care about this stuff. They need something.”

During the January 17 meeting, participants expressed hope that involving people of all ages—including teens—in the process of designing the playground, and including elements for people of all ages in its design, would create a sense of buy-in that would deter anti-social behaviors such as vandalism.

Glover said she’s found with other community projects that if generations of kids are involved in a project’s creation, they’ll take better care of it. If there’s a piece of equipment that’s obviously for teens, they would be less likely to occupy spaces designed for smaller children, she said. 

She added that she knew very few adults who, when they became teens, didn’t want to go to the playground at all. 

‘Come as you are’

Participants discussed as well the variety of age ranges and differently-abled peoples the park could accommodate.

Parents said there were few places in the area with specific equipment for very small children, including toddlers. On the other end of the age spectrum, participants brought up as examples parks with calisthenics equipment aimed at older adults, to help keep people active and healthy later in their lives. 

Participants also discussed the potential ways of encouraging accessibility for the playground. One survey response reads, “Please include pieces for disabled children of all sizes as well—wheelchair swings, rockers [and] other sensory play items.”

Survey respondents additionally made clear their preference for having swings at the new playground. “Swinging back and forth” as a desired activity at the playground had 84.3 percent in support, the highest rated of all provided categories of activities (with “sliding” coming in second at 77.5 percent).