HUNTINGTON BEACH — Over here, workers poured concrete, and over there, shoveled mulch. While one group bolted together a slide, another mounted the frame of a swing set.
Several people sat painting asphalt with colorful messages. Across the way, cohorts pieced together cedar slats to form benches and planters.
Oak View Center Park in Huntington Beach buzzed with activity Wednesday, Feb. 27, as it underwent a fast-paced makeover.
More than 200 volunteers swarmed every corner of what just days before had been an antiquated playground, reinventing it with modern equipment, attractive landscaping and creative touches.
“I know how to mix concrete a lot better now than I did earlier today,” said participant Mike Sharpe.
The project was spearheaded by Santa Ana-based Yokohama Tire and KaBoom!, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that helps renovate playgrounds around the country. Also chipping in were volunteers from the community, Hoag Hospital and the Children’s Bureau, a child abuse prevention program.
“Yokohama approached us with this idea, and the timing could not be more perfect,” said Nashya Sadono, assistant planner for Huntington Beach. “Just in November, the city council approved a priority list for renovating parks as funding becomes available. Oak View was first on the list.”
The public park, adjacent Oak View Elementary School, is in the city’s lowest-income neighborhood. Last updated in 1998, the playground was no longer compliant with building codes, Sadono said. Yokohama picked up the tab for equipment, she added. Huntington Beach only had to cover the cost of extras such as dumpsters and portable toilets at about $15,000.
Yokohama did not reveal the value of the donated equipment.
The tire company’s good dead coincided with its national conference, currently taking place in Orange County. Most of Yokohama’s 140 volunteers were visiting from other states.
“They sprung it on us yesterday,” laughed Sharpe, an account manager based in Nashville. But he wasn’t really surprised when Yokohama drafted employees into service: “We like to put our best foot forward wherever we go.”
KaBOOM! account manager Andrew Williams said the organization designed the playground after getting input from local families, including children, in a workshop earlier this year. “We asked kids to draw us pictures of their dream playgrounds,” he said.
Among those who showed up Wednesday to donate elbow grease was Maria Elena. Her children went through the local school system and then to college, she proudly noted. And now her granddaughter goes to Oak View Elementary.
“I am very excited because the community has been asking for this to happen for a long time,” Elena said.
Michaell Rose, director of community benefits at Hoag, helped transfer a large pile of mulch to its destination beneath playground equipment.
“There is a lot of social inequality in this neighborhood,” she said. “The brand-new sparkling playground will go a long way to energizing the community and lifting it up.”
Yokohama left its mark with a configuration of brightly painted tires awaiting little climbers. A wooden dragon head transforms one row of planted tires into a sea serpent.
Sharpe said Yokohama employees found reward in their manual labor on several fronts.
“It’s a nice break from sitting in a room watching PowerPoints,” he said. “And we’re outside on a sunny day when back home, for most of us, there’s three feet of snow on the ground.”