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City Beat
Playground at WG park is designed for disabled children
New construction began last month and is expected to be finished by fall
By Kate Carter
Willow Glen will soon be the new home of the city's first park designed specifically for kids of all ages and ability levels.
The Lincoln Glen Play-for-All Park on Curtner Avenue, just west of Lincoln Avenue, is under construction and scheduled for completion in mid-September. The park's two new playgrounds, one for toddlers and one for school-aged children, will be fully accessible by children with physical disabilities.
"Our other parks are accessible," said Michael LaRocca, projects manager for the department of parks, recreation and neighborhood services, "But they are not totally accessible."
The construction company Robert A. Bothman Inc., began work on March 15, LaRocca said. The project will cost the city about $1.2 million.
Costs had been projected at nearly half that amount last summer. LaRocca said the cost increase is due to additional work being done on the site. The original figure had included only the playground facilities, he said. The entire project now includes moving a field and installing a new irrigation system, building a parking lot and moving a driveway off Radio Avenue, and building a restroom.
The parking lot, accessible from Radio Avenue, will be enlarged to accommodate about 20 more cars and the driveway will be moved about 30 feet south, down Radio, LaRocca said.
Aaron Nakano, project manager for Bothman, said the site is a little under two acres in size and that the park would retain about an acre of open field space.
Two playground lots--one for toddlers and one for school-aged children--will be separated by a shared water play feature, Nakano said. He described the water feature as a fountain jet similar to those at Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown San Jose.
LaRocca said the tot lot will be surrounded by fencing and will include play areas for swings, sand and water bubblers, and playhouse, slides and climbing structures. The lot will also have an arbor, a lawn and picnic tables and benches.
A youth lot will have climbing structures and slides, a water play feature and swings, LaRocca said. The park will be landscaped with groundcover and shrubs in planters.
All the playground structures will be accessible by children with disabilities, through their design and because the playground surface--a multicolored rubberized matting--is level to let children in wheelchairs move close to the structures, Nakano and LaRocca said.
The playground was designed by Moore Iacofano Goltsman, a Berkeley architectural firm that has designed other Bay Area parks for children with disabilities.
"It's a very complex play area with quite a few different elements that make it challenging for children," Nakano said. "There's a wide range of types of play apparatus. It goes a little bit beyond just handicap accessibility."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
