Kick-Off: Joey's Park Construction Officially Underway

Ellen Schreiber was running around the Joey's Park worksite adjacent to the Winn Brook Elementary School like a perpetual motion machine: directing volunteers, issuing edicts and forcing all media to sign waivers, all at the same time.

"I love this!" Schreiber said on Friday, Sept. 27, seeing what was only a concept more than a year ago and in blueprints for several months becoming a reality.

The co-chair of the Friends of Joey's Park has been the visual embodiment of the thousands of residents and people who have contributed money, time and effort to creating a new playground on the site of the original Joey's Park, whose quarter-century wooden framework was all but condemned by town inspectors in 2011. 

"This is unbelievable. It's finally happening," she said at the official kickoff of the reconstruction of the Joey's Park Playground, marking the start of nine "community build" days which should conclude on Monday, Oct. 14, on Belmont Serves Day. 

In the field were the purple T-shirts of volunteers from Vertex Pharmaceuticals digging two-foot holes under the direction of crew captains from Suffolk Construction. Over in what was the school's parking lot, more Vertex employees, some of the 200 volunteering during their company's "Day of Service" cutting planks and boards while others drilled holes and arranged components that will hold the playground equipment. 

"I can't imagine a more appropriate project for our company to be involved in," said Jeff Leiden, Vertex's chairman, president and CEO, noting that his company is developing breakthrough drug treatments for cystic fibrosis, the disease that in 1986 claimed the life of 12-year-old Joey O'Donnell.

It was his family and childhood friends to decided to build the original playground in his memory 24 years ago. 

As for John Fish, chairman and CEO of the region's leading construction firm, helping to build a playground has more meaning then constructing a skyscraper "because of the meaning behind this."

"This is about a community coming together to continue the spirit of a young boy who died before he should have. This is much more interesting," Fish said earlier in the day.

And for Joe and Kathy O'Donnell, Joey's parents, the day is one of uplifting emotions as they see many generation of children using the playground that is named for their son and his life.

For Diane Miller, an architect and co-chair of the Friend of Joey's Park, there will be 27 four hour shifts in the nine days of construction with 1,000 volunteers taking part.

And while the project thanks the volunteers from companies and construction firms, "the bulk of this will be built by Belmont residents. That will allow us all to feel that we are invested in this structure, that we will have put ourselves into the project."