Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Last Slide: Avery Laurin, 3, heads down the youth lot slide at River Glen Park while John Gong-Guy, 3, waits his turn. The slide will be replaced with a shorter one when the park gets new play structures and other upgrades beginning this month.
River Glen Park to get two new playgrounds, restroom upgrade
Improvements are funded by money approved last Nov.
By Kate Carter
Willow Glen's River Glen Park is getting new play structures and fitness equipment in an upgrade to begin this month. The park's restrooms will also be improved in a project likely to begin next spring.
"Kids of all ages will have something new to play on," said Todd Capurso, parks manager for the San Jose Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, of the upgrades.
The improvements planned for the park at the corner of Pine and Bird avenues are funded by bond money approved by San Jose voters last November as a part of Measure P. Mayor Ron Gonzales, District 6 City Councilman Ken Yeager and other city officials thanked those voters at a ceremonial groundbreaking event at the park Oct. 27.
"This is all able to happen because voters approved Measure P," Yeager said.
Gonzales, Yeager, Deputy City Attorney Terry Roberts, Assistant Director for the Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Albert Balagso, and Willow Glen Neighborhood Association President John Gibbs then solicited the help of gathered children to spade shovelfuls of sand, which in a matter of months will no longer be there.
Play structures at the park's tot lot, meant for children ages 2 to 5, and the youth lot, meant for children ages 5 to 12, will be replaced with new structures, and the sand will be replaced with a combination of engineered wood fiber and resilient surfacing, to bring the park into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Capurso said.
In addition, the new structures will incorporate less wood and will be safer than the existing structures, which Capurso estimated at about 10 or 12 years old. That means the youth's popular 12-foot slide will probably be replaced with a shorter model, no longer than 10 feet. Capurso acknowledged that most of the children won't like that idea, but it and other elements of the new structures are necessary to make them safer.
The community had a chance to chime in on the plans for the park upgrades at two community meetings earlier this year, Capurso said. He said they can expect one more meeting to discuss plans for upgrading the park restrooms, a project that was originally scheduled to be completed in conjunction with the playground upgrades, but that must be delayed.
The delay is because the city would like to maintain the number of stalls in each of the men's and women's bathrooms--three. But to do so, the bathrooms, which have no handicapped-accessible stalls, must be enlarged to be made ADA-compliant and allow each an appropriate stall, an accessible sink and enough room for a wheelchair to turn around.
However, the bathrooms are part of the park's program room building, which also houses a snack shack for the little league that uses the park's baseball field, Capurso said. The building, which is about 50 years old, is made of cinderblock, and expanding the bathrooms could be a complicated and costly project that would take space away from the rest of the building--about 50 square feet for each bathroom--he said.
City officials still have not decided on a plan for the restroom upgrades, which could require the construction of a separate bathroom building altogether, Capurso said. They didn't want to wait to get started on the park's other upgrades, however, so the project was bid and a contract awarded to San Jose-based HRB Construction for the playground and fitness area improvements, he said. The work should be completed in about six months, right when children are getting out of school next year.
That's about the time the city expects to begin work on the bathrooms, and Capurso said portables will be available if the restrooms aren't usable.
The two new play structures to replace those in the park's tot and youth lots will cost about $250,000 each, Capurso said. Costs for the restroom upgrades are still unknown as the plan is not yet finalized, although the budget allows for a $200,000 project, he said. More money could be available if construction on the playgrounds is less expensive than expected, he added.
The money to replace the adult fitness area with new equipment--about $16,000--comes from the department's trust fund, money it gathers from new construction in the area. Capurso said that money must be used in the area from which it was received and in a timely fashion, so it made sense to include the fitness upgrades with other improvements at River Glen. He said the park is in good shape, but the fitness equipment would likely have to be replaced in about five years because of the wood's gradual deterioration. The new equipment will not be made of wood and will coordinate with the play structures.
Gibbs said he was pleased the improvements at River Glen, just one park among 100 in the city scheduled for improvements, are being made so soon after the funding was approved.
"What I think is nice is that voters vote on something, and they immediately see something happen in their neighborhood," he said.
In his address to the about 30 people gathered at the park for doughnuts and coffee, provided by the Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company, Gonzales also congratulated voters on passing Measure O, Measure P's sister measure, to approve upgrades to the city's branch library system.
"All those kinds of things make up a great neighborhood," Gonzales said. "We hope you'll tolerate the dust and disturbance and enjoy the park when it's done."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
