California Community Restores Playground After Devastating Fire
As part of our ongoing GameTime Cares initiative, we're sharing a series of Caring Communities posts. We work with many great people to build parks and playgrounds. These are the stories of communities who care.
In September 2020, the Chula Vista Fire Department responded to a call regarding an explosion near a local playground at Veterans Park. When they arrived on the scene, they quickly realized that the park was not salvageable. Fortunately, nobody was injured in the fire, but the community was still heartbroken over the loss of Veterans Park. Although the arsonist took the previous playground away from Chula Vista's residents, he could not take away their dedication to providing an inclusive playspace for the community.
The new playground at Veterans Park in Chula Vista, California, includes GT Wave, a massive playground net structure with inclusive features.
A New GameTime Playground Rises Out of the Ashes
GameTime and Great Western Recreation, GameTime's exclusive representative in Southern California, were working with the city of Chula Vista on another project when the playground equipment at Veterans Park was destroyed. When we heard the tragic news about the arson, we knew we wanted to help the beloved playground and bring back play to this neighborhood.
“My kids grew up on this playground. And we spend a lot of time here at the field, so it’s sad to know that happened so close,” a Chula Vista resident told Fox5 San Diego.
The city parks department put the insurance replacement money toward the renovations, and the remainder of the funding came from the Measure P fund, which is the city’s infrastructure tax. By November of 2020, we’d begun the design process, and the community debuted the new and improved Veterans Park just three months later.
Inclusive Play Innovation
The newly installed playground wasn’t a typical update of equipment. Chula Vista's residents saw the space as an opportunity to bring innovative and inclusive play to their community. That’s why this site was chosen for the nation’s first-ever inclusive net climber—the GT Wave.
GT Wave is an inclusive playground net climber with a transfer platform and accessible route through the structure. The park features accessible poured-in-place surfacing around GT Wave.
GT Wave® is the industry’s first net climber that’s accessible for people of all abilities. Users can transfer out of their mobility device into a slide connected to the net climber.
“We were trying to turn a tragic event into something good for this community,” says KJ LeCesne, Great Western Recreation Project Manager. “With the installation of the GT Wave, I believe we definitely turned a negative into a positive for the residents of Chula Vista.”
GT Wave features a transfer platform for people to transfer to and from a mobility device. It's also the only playground net climber with an accessible route to a zip slide at the other end.
In addition to the GT Wave, the park also features other GameTime playground equipment, including swings, spinners, and accessible poured-in-place surfacing to create an accessible route of travel around GT Wave.
An overhead look at the new playground at Veterans Park in Chula Vista, California. Swings and spinners add ways for children to stay in motion, and GT Wave is the industry's first inclusive playground net climber.
Veterans Park is the second project GameTime has completed in Chula Vista in the past year, but the city isn’t finished bringing play to its neighborhoods just yet. In fact, the city of Chula Vista is currently working on another project with GameTime, which will receive at least one National Demonstration Site designation.
“It’s a partnership. This isn’t just a one-time project,” says KJ. “This is something we’re all excited about, and we’ll continue to bring innovative and fun products to this community.”
Pioneers for Inclusive Play
The new playground at Veterans Park is an example of partnership and a pioneering spirit. GameTime and Great Western Recreation are committed to California communities and creating great places to play. Whether we are creating new spaces or restoring play when tragedy strikes, our passion is to ensure play is possible for everyone.
GameTime is dedicated to creating new and exciting playground equipment and play spaces for communities like Chula Vista. If your local playground could benefit from GameTime’s extensive offerings of innovative products, contact the play expert in your area.