Who’s rebuilding Jenkintown’s only playground? Maybe you are.
Residents are planning a weekend volunteer event this month to help replace the town's only playground after the beloved Jenkintown Castle was demolished in April.
Jenkintown residents are building a playground this month.
Or at least, part of a playground.
“They’re not professional contractors,” said Darrell Campana of Eustace Engineering, which is handling land work, like regrading and water drainage. The playground company Kompan is installing the play equipment.
But local volunteers do plan to construct parts of the replacement for Jenkintown’s only playground on the last weekend in July after Eustace demolished the beloved Jenkintown Castle there in April.
The finished playground, dubbed Legacy Park, will include slides, swings, a toddler section, and an imaginative play area with a stage donated by Jenkintown Music Theatre, said Kelly Hudson, who spearheaded the roughly $1.3 million project as a volunteer on the newly formed playground board.
Residents have led planning and fundraising for the project as Jenkintown tries to balance its proud DIY ethos with the present-day constraints of construction, insurance, and liability.
Beloved Jenkintown Castle demolished
Playground renovation plans began after a 2024 inspection revealed several parts of the play area, which is next to Jenkintown Elementary, were unsafe.
The castle play area was built in 2002 and lovingly maintained by residents — which may be why the structure, expected to last about 12 years, lasted more than two decades said Nina Russakoff, a Jenkintown school board member who’s helping to coordinate the new project.
In a 2024 update on the damaged castle ahead of the renovation, school officials had to remind residents to stop fixing it themselves: “We know your intentions are good, but we need to ... [follow] the recommendations of the engineer.”
Residents held a farewell picnic and fundraiser at the castle in March before it was destroyed.
The school’s nonprofit arm, the Jenkintown Education Foundation, and other community groups have raised about $1.5 million for the project known as Legacy Park, Hudson said. If the playground doesn’t go over budget, the remaining funds will be used to make further improvements to the park.
There are many older, community-built parks like Jenkintown’s in the Philadelphia area, said Scott Lean of Kompan, the company providing the play equipment, but that model has become less viable in recent years.
“The liability standpoint from doing a community build just seems a little risky in this day and age,” he said.
Residents help rebuild Jenkintown playground
Residents can still shape the playground’s future, though.
Project leaders are recruiting volunteers for the community build weekend from July 30 to Aug. 2. The residents will be supervised by experienced crew leaders, with a meal and free childcare for people who volunteer a shift.
Residents will be working on drumming stations, a sign language fence, and log seating carved from trees felled on the school grounds.
In the meantime, land work will continue this month, although several retaining walls are already in place, Campana said.
Volunteers may be playing a smaller role in playground construction this time around, but it was local residents who fundraised most of the park’s budget.
Large donations came from fastener factory SPS Technologies and other local businesses, a state grant, and several families, with more than 1,600 individual donations.
What will Jenkintown’s new playground look like?
Volunteers also led the design of the new playground with guidance from students, teachers, and parents.
The layout will be different from the old playground: All play areas will be visible to teachers calling children back from recess, Hudson said, and the equipment will be situated so that kids can play without distracting students inside during school hours.
“Most screaming will move to the new location,” Russakoff said.
Residents wanted to ensure the new play equipment is both accessible and durable, Hudson said: “Everything the kids touch in Jenkintown is 10 times over because it’s the only playground. It gets used heavily.”
Slides, swings, mountaineering ropes, and a toddler area are set to be finished around the start of school, Lean said. The theater area will open later this fall.
Legacy Park will be open to the public outside school hours, and the toddler area will stay open during school when students aren’t at recess.
Jenkintown School District “has an outsized impact on the community around it,” the borough’s state representative, Napoleon Nelson, said in a statement on the project. “Its grounds are open to all, Jenkintown residents and non-residents alike.”
Hudson said Jenkintonians want the playground “to be a community project that benefits the most people.”
“We’re very prideful about our small little town.”
Inquirer Greater Abington
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