Community Corner

Playground Playbook: New Joey's Park Building Schedule Released

First work to build the new playground gets underway next week, ending with community build on the Columbus Day holiday weekend.

Belmont's own community "big dig" – a two month long reconstruction of a new Joey's Park playground adjacent to the Winn Brook Elementary School – will begin next week when the quarter-century old wooden structure will begin to be demolished, according to the group which has spearheaded the rebuilding of the playground since the town deemed the structure unsafe in Oct. 2011.

Friends of Joey's Park's co-chairs Ellen Schrieiber and Diane Miller came before the Belmont Board of Selectmen Monday, July 29, with a detail schedule of the upcoming construction timeline for the park, beginning Monday, Aug. 5, when Belmont's Department of Public Works crews will begin knocking down the existing structure to be replaced by a modern community-designed play structure. 

In fact, the swings at the playground have already been removed so they can be recycled in the new Joey's Park, said Schrieiber. 

The conclusion of the event will be, according to Schrieiber, "a massive community 'barn-raising'"over the Columbus Day holiday weekend where up to 1,000 community volunteers working in shifts and overseen by leaders from professional playground builders, Play By Design, will oversee teams of volunteers as the new structure is put in place.

During the construction period beginning next week, the Winn Brook parking lot will be closed to become a staging area for the build, said Schrieiber.

“We are extremely grateful to the [DPW], the James W. Flett Company, F.E. French Company and Mahoney Oil for taking the lead in this initial phase of the project," said Schrieiber, who said there will be an "informal" good-bye to the old structure this Friday, Aug. 2 beginning at 6 p.m.

The project's timeline is:

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Aug. 5: Belmont DPW will demolish the existing structure, prepare the site, install a multi-generational concrete path around the park and install several manufactured playground components.

Sept. 27 to 29: During this “Pre-Build” phase, community volunteers, including 200 employees of Cambridge-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals who are coming on a "Day of Service," will place the posts for the new play structure and build several site features such as benches, tables, a deck and pergola.

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Oct. 9 to 14: More than 1,000 Belmont residents, in shifts of 75-150 volunteers, will join together in the multi-day final construction of the new playground. At the conclusion, there will be a community picnic to celebrate the new park and the community effort building the structure.

To learn more about the construction and the park itself, visit the website www.joeyspark.org of go to the Friends of Joey’s Park Facebook page.


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