When I was in high school.

This is like where we came to hang out, and it just seemed like one day this wooden playground just appeared and it was the coolest looking thing about like the my friends and I had seen, like, it was just so neat.

- When I was a young mother, I had three daughters and we would come here and play, even though we lived about four miles away.

But it was the best playground so we’d come here.

It was always part of a big day.

We'd go to Tommy's and get a milkshake.

We would come to the playground and play and we'd go to the library.

- People love going to this park You know, this is really quality of life.

- I would admit that I would have no idea how long I thought the park would last.

I just, I never was a question in my mind.

- Every time I was walking by here with someone, I would say, you know, we built that right?

So I guess I was real proud.

- The playground existed for 30 years until it was demolished in October, November of 2023.

- For me, even though there's a lot of great memories and love for the original park, it was at its end of life.

- I mean, it was like literally dangerous.

The structures were made out of wood.

A lot of the wood was, you know, just deteriorating because it's old.

Nails were coming up.

- As I think about the history of the park.

It was a group of parents that came together to fundraise for it originally back in 1993.

And, you know, the original purpose and the original kind of mission of it was, people enhancing a child's environment.

- It's kind of crazy when you think back on it, that we ever were allowed to do it for one, and that we were able to get it done.

- We said if we took on the park we wanted to make it better than it was in the 90s when it was first built.

- Our kids started going to Coventry School and we being a lot younger then than we are now.

Wanted to get involved as much as we could.

And so the first thing was join PTA.

- My kid was a student at school so people were complaining, hey, the playgrounds a wreck we ought to do something about it.

- And the principal might have mentioned at a PTA meeting that they were thinking of redoing the playground.

- And, you know, the, somebody ought to do something about it.

And it's like, well, okay, fine here.

- One of the things is we like to Take a temperature check.

Are there really a hundred people, Who said that this was something they wanted?

No, there were 400.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

- You know, the rest of us just followed like lemmings.

Okay.

Whatever you want will do.

- And it just.

It went straight to my head.

It's like, oh, yes, this is what I've been waiting for.

- So, you know, everybody was active in the school, and you just wanted to do it.

- Where do I begin?

- And welcome to Playground Building 101.

Now, is there anybody in this room that does not know that we are building a playground?

Please raise your hands.

Oh, I can proceed.

Now, there are four major elements to building a playground.

I just want to go over them.

You should have had this in your other classes, but let me just go over it.

One more time.

One money.

Number two volunteers three schools and food.

We are going to be feeding 400 volunteers between the sixth and the tenth.

Give me a P. Give me an E.

(Volunteers) E!

Give me an A.

(Volunteers) A!

Give me a C.

(Volunteers) C!

Give me a E!

(Volunteers) E!

What do you have?

(Volunteers) PEACE!

Oh good, you can spell.

- They had the the monthly or weekly meetings here, planning how they're going to do what they're going to do.

And obviously we fed everybody.

- Fundraising was tough.

- The bad news is that the poles are $2,000.

Your CEI called me up about an hour and a half ago in a conference call with the lady that was going to let us have poles saying that she doesn't think she's going to be able to do that.

-It was pretty much a grassroots effort, and I said, I know how to use QuickBooks.

And I became the fundraising guy.

A lot of folks came up with a lot of good ideas for raising money.

- That's personal.

- I got some of that.

It's that plus some plus this.

- That’s seventy.

-Is that off of cider and donuts?

- This is shirt sales.

Also so heres another 60 bucks, 70 bucks $250 worth of sales, cider, donuts, shirts, etc.

yesterday.

-And we were very inexperienced and very naive and very enthusiastic.

So we didn't have the money at that point.

I mean, you know, really we didn't have the money when we started to build - As a planning director, You're, you're planning for the future.

And here's community spirit for the future.

And that's one of the wonderful reasons someone like me loved getting engaged and involved and convincing City Council, the city manager and the mayor to contribute.

- So they gave us a date and they said it would be five days.

And we're like, what?

I see that you've been doing a lot of planning to get ready for your playground and, I have, kind of an unusual, part of the way I know playgrounds.

So we brought Learning Structures, in, they talked to us.

They set something up for the kids to talk to them, and they had a big brainstorming session with the kids throwing out all these ridiculous ideas as only kids can come up with, you know, just really fabulous ideas.

- A big green grasshopper that we can climb and swing on that long slide going down the hill.

- Oh, all right, a slide on the hill.

- I’d like, poles that you can climb across.

- One of those Tarzan that you can grab on and swing down to the ground - With any of these activities you could put suspension bridges, you know like, - Connecting them?

- Yeah, connecting them.

- Oh, good.

All right.

Suspension.

We could do that.

And these tires, they turn them challenge courses.

And what we did was we put, a tarantula animal up here.

Serves a couple of purposes.

It's something that's good to climb on, and it guards the playground when kids aren't there.

And that's important.

And the positioning was such that it greets the kids as they come out of the, it's going to be right out there.

- It eats the kids?

- No, no, no.

Well, I don't know.

- 75 tires.

I've been on the phone trying to find the rest of the tires.

Because we cleaned out this one place.

- They sent a list of things that people had to get before the build.

My husband was on the team that had to get tires.

And so on the day that they went to get tires, it was raining.

Rolling tires down the hills, rolling them across the mud puddles and into a truck.

And they needed a lot.

So they needed that, we needed lumber.

We needed to line up different services.

And then recruit volunteers for the, for everything.

- It just is amazing how much was accomplished with we’ll just say with so few people who were professionals in the area.

- You’re not going to really try and photograph me trying to hammer a nail upside down.

Are you?

Because I haven't done this in a years.

- Yeah, what we did then, we could never do today.

It would never be allowed at any level.

- I could basically screw in a light bulb and I can, plug in, the telephone into an outlet, an existing outlet.

- I did not lift a hammer, but I was there with the food and the drinks.

But it was great to be a part of it.

- Each and every person that that was involved.

The committee found a skill set that was within your range.

So that was gutsy in itself, I think.

So, I mean, we had a lot of very capable carpenters and knew what they were doing, but still that was a huge playground to build that way.

- I think the scope of it was just astonishing to me.

- We had parents, we had alumni, we had people from the neighborhood volunteering, saying, what can you use me for?

Cleveland Heights has amazing talent for just about anything, anything you want.

You know, you just had to put the word out.

- I dug holes, I slid in the mud I helped paint.

- I was on the food committee and I have never dragged so many sandwiches and so much coffee through the world.

- I'm.

I'm Stacy Chandler.

I'm.

I'm the food coordinator.

- When it came time to build, I was all in there were all sorts of roles you could fill as a volunteer and the volunteers needed to eat, and many of whom needed childcare so you could do food, you could do childcare.

And there was sort of a presumption that women would take those roles and the men would do the cool stuff.

And I said, absolutely not.

I'm not making sandwiches when I could.

Be out using power tools.

- Hey, I want you to know that all the mothers are not here making sandwiches and watching children.

Someo of us are out there, hands on.

See how dirty my hands are.

We are helping with the building.

We're carrying things and counting screws.

- And Bob Saher was, from my perspective, our construction manager.

And I told him I wanted to do this, and he said, you got it.

And gave me a pair of safety glasses.

Taught me how to use a drill press, taught me how to use a sawzall, which we needed.

On Saturday.

I had the time of my life.

- What he doesn’t mind is that I'm better with the powertools than he is.

- Woo - Pretty cool guy.

- One of our friends was in charge of all the parts, so he had this huge layout of all kinds of screws or whatever.

I mean, they just keeping track of that, you know, the numbers of them.

And I hadn't really come to understand until I saw it in action how huge a project it was.

- We built on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and October and Thursday and Friday were incredibly beautiful days, probably 70 degrees.

Not a cloud in the sky.

Right off the bat, we ran into issues, construction issues.

We had a guy that worked at CEI, and he took the day off, and that was the day we, we realized we couldn't sink the light posts that we were going to put in the ground because they had just covered over the rubble of Coventry school and we couldn't get through it.

- I am familiar with the trucks that you will be willing to just let me use a truck.

I'm already I'm already scheduled off.

It's my day off.

Wednesday and Thursday is my day off.

So, if he would, just be willing to just let me use a truck.

- And he called his boss and brought in a couple of auger trucks to help us get the poles in.

- He called me back this morning to send a guy out with the truck.

- And then the auger trucks ran into the foundation.

of the old school.

- We learned during the, planning stage that the old- The foundation for the old 1919 elementary school, which had been torn down, the foundation was left in the- on the property.

- So we called City Hall and said can we get a couple jackhammers over here?

So the city came running jackhammers.

- Saturday, if it was 40 degrees, I'd be surprised.

- It was pouring.

rain and it was cold.

And it was just deep mud.

And these unbelievable parents were down in these ditches, in the mud, in the freezing rain, fixing problems.

And we just worked through it.

- So we had 100, 150 people out with extension cords and power tools in the rain.

So when tools start getting wet, you get a little bit of a jolt.

And they were notified to bring them in immediately.

And I had a staff of six that had hairdryers and fans and whatever drying them out, Hunan brought over a big pot of egg drop soup, which was best egg drop soup I ever had.

- Ginger and I got the luckiest assignment.

We were assigned to putting together something called the five tier Bouncer, and we got to do that under a tent, a construction tent.

So we were happily dry, if not, even warm.

- I remember looking and we were at the top of the hill, and I remember looking down the hill, and one of the biggest pieces of playground equipment was a ship.

And the sides of the ship were made of tires that had to be buried about 12, maybe 18in into the ground.

These people were covered from head to toe with mud, freezing cold.

- And, we put together what became the five tire bouncer.

- While I'm watching one of my buddies, down in the ditch, in the mud, in the brain, in the cold, the misery.

So, it was pretty funny.

- It was terrible.

But people came.

Everybody showed up because everybody wanted to be a part of it.

Coventry was called the Peace School because every school in the district had a theme at that point, arts or foreign languages.

Coventry was the peace School.

What was the Peace Corps?

The Peace Corps was, the children learning nonviolent conflict, resolution.

Children were trained to be peer mediators or conflict mediators.

And those kids were called peacemakers.

And it was a distinct honor to be nominated and to get through the training to be a peacemaker.

Our son did it.

I think it was a foundational, experience for him.

It taught him a lot about communicating.

Was positivity.

He taught us about communicating with positivity.

Somebody's got cuteness as well as to peace school.

We need to have a peace park, and they reverse engineered.

What is that an acronym for?

So P.E.A.C.E is an acronym.

In the old days it was people enhancing a child's environment.

You know, reverse engineered.

We have this this acronym.

What are we going to say it means, which I think was terrifically clever on the part of some adults lately we have tried to foist upon everyone that is now people enhancing a community's environment.

- One thing we know is when the park was originally built, it was a draw for people from all over Northeast Ohio.

- Library has always used the park as their outdoor space.

- The whole idea was to bring community together.

We had a lot of family friendly things.

They have poetry slams here.

They have Shakespeare in the Park.

On Sunday nights during nice weather, there's a drum circle.

- We went from that one bench of people, maybe there was 7 or 8 people to a couple hundred people, you know?

And, it's really a beautiful thing.

You know, at times when we're drumming and there's a collective sound that happens with all those drums and all the instruments and all the dancers and, you know, and we're all supposed to be here at that time.

- So I guess the residents didn't mind.

- Once the library took over the playground officially in 2018, it just was not able to be sustained in its current state.

- We held cleanups twice a year where we fixed the things that were breaking in the park.

We rebuilt structures, we did gardening, weeding, picked up trash, replaced the zip lines that would wear out.

You know, everything slowly wears out and you have to maintain it.

And we did that actively for two decades, watching the park get older and tireder and knowing it would need to be completely replaced.

- I'm very excited about the rebuild.

30 years in, the playground, had, had, had, given it's all it was a it was an exciting playground for the kids that had been here for, you know, that generation.

But we were ready for a refresh for the next generation.

- So I think it is really amazing And it's really going to be great for our community.

- I woke up and said, this is a happy day.

We have worked for years to bring to you the wonderful Coventry P.E.A.C.E Park Part deux - My sister's grandchild.

We're bringing them up here and we're looking forward to the big slide.

You know, coming back and being able to share that with all the children in our life.

- I see some of the kids today.

It was like 15, 20 years ago.

You know, they were 10 or 12.

They're in their 30s.

You know, they've got kids now.

So maybe they'll bring their kids to it.

- If you don't renew your community, you're not going to have one.

- I think it's important to the community that they see something just as magical as they, they, they, work with their hands, be put back there.

- When the library took over the management of the property, I think it was important for us to keep that legacy going.

Parks and playgrounds are one of the few free spaces we have left.

Libraries are obviously that now for people, but playgrounds are ones where no one has to pay for an entry fee.

There's no membership required, and you don't even really need to be a resident of the community.

My hope is that it's going to be a new beacon for the Coventry Village.

- I have seen some of the things around Coventry close, so I think revitalizing the park is a great first step in order to get new life into this Coventry area.

So having a brand new park that families can explore and just, you know, have a picnic or just, you know, hang out in play, you know, I think is a really great thing.

- And ultimately it's important that they feel a part of this because they're going to be the stewards.

A library is a public entity.

And I think it's important that the community feels a part of that, because they'll also be a part of making sure that this thing, lasts another 30 years, if not more.

- I remember going up to them and saying, this is fabulous.

You are replacing it with something that's equally as interesting.

And and now it's a community park with a walkway and connecting the buildings and, and we're good with it.

I think everybody said that.

- Coventry's really important to me.

My wife and I have lived here for 42 years now.

- It is a community of artists and chefs and writers.

- I had a business on the street Big Fun, for 28 years, and so I was brought up in a family that you kind of enrich the neighborhood in which you live, and you work.

But I was the creator of bringing movies to Coventry.

We had cartoon nights, and then we had a Three Stooges film festival, complete with a pie fight afterwards.

And I think we're going to do that again when we indoctrinate the P.E.A.C.E Park and we're going to have a movie night and we're going to because people are asking for it, we're going to have a pie fight.

Thank you for joining us today today and for braving the cold and snow - I love it.

I love the design.

I love the Cardinal.

- We have the slide.

When you get down, you like fall onto the ground.

- And then I was actually, like, screaming - Me too.

- Like, “Ahh” - Today I just saw so much of our community there and it's exciting.

It's like a rebirth of the playground.

So I'm excited to have more people to to be there.

- A couple of people have mentioned to me that this is a legacy project.

- I'm really happy to have a community project to put our back bones into.

- Knowing that the park was made by members of the community, and feeling that love and spending time in the park was really meaningful.

- I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and I said that the whole experience just reaffirms your belief in human nature, and he started laughing.

But I was really serious.

- That's all volunteer.

That's the nicest part about it is that in that one weekend, those 400 volunteers came together and it was raining and muddy and raining, and they've got it all together and got it done.

- Planned chaos It's a lot of fun.

See it?

It's hard to believe, but it's actually materializing - And I lived on the street, maybe half mile.

We have two children, will be of school age shortly, and I'd like to be able to tell them I helped build their playground.

- You know.

You see it on paper and then you see the model and you don't realize what it's going to be until you see it up.

It's unbelievable, just unbelievable.

- The kids will love it.

The community is going to love it, no doubt about it.

- I'm just totally overwhelmed with with the progress and with the community spirit.

And just, just the total feeling of what's going on here.

It's it's just unbelievable.

There's just the nostalgia factor.

I mean, this is like, I feel like any parent kind of gets this.

Anytime you get to do something with your kids that you did as a kid that you loved, you know, and they love it too.

- So is super important, I think is going to bring that mindset that, you know, we need to be kinder and gentler to this world we live in.

If we intend to keep it and pass it on to our children and further generations.

- That would be the best word to describe it.

You're absolutely right.

I miss that word and that is how you would describe it.

It was theirs.

They owned it not selfishly, but they owned it because they built it.

And they cared about the families that would participate in having fun on it.

And there's nothing better than that.

There's nothing better than that.

You can't buy that.

You can't teach it.

It's in your heart it’s in your soul.

That's Coventry.