What a grand opening at KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play! Thanks to John McKenzie of Bainbridge Community Broadcasting for putting together this great video of the festivities, and all who attended and made this such a special day for our kids and families.
Chris Cain would tell you, he had the easy part.
Designing KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play, the spectacular, super-inclusive new playground at Battle Point Park, didn’t take much more than brainstorming with parents and suggesting what might go where. Then he stood back and watched.
“My role was really just to put ideas on paper, and get it spatially organized,” says Cain, a landscape architect with Bainbridge Island’s Studio Hanson Roberts. “Normally when we do a design project, it takes months of planning, there’s packages of drawings to deliver… I sat in on meetings and did some sketches here and there.”
Well, there was a little more to it than that. But when the new playground opens on Sept. 4, kids of all ages and abilities will find a veritable wonderland of sight, sound, sensation and even scent in the wildflower and herb gardens, play features […]
A giant Ferry Boat play structure is the centerpiece as Bainbridge Island welcomes an imaginative, inclusive new playground at Battle Point Park
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – It’s time to play! KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play, an imaginative, inclusive new playground built around a giant Ferry Boat play structure, opens Sept. 4 at Battle Point Park on Bainbridge Island.
A 10 a.m. dedication will celebrate the playground opening, with music and food trucks planned for a day of excitement and fun for kids and families. The event is presented by the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District and Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation, and sponsored by Play Creations and Landscape Structures, Inc.
The playground centerpiece is the “M/V KidsUp!”, a custom-built, one-of-kind play structure that evokes the Puget Sound ferry fleet. The two-level, 47-foot-long ferry was designed and fabricated by Landscape Structures, Inc., equipment supplier for the playground.
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Bright color is nice, and a sweet fragrance. Drought resistance, of course. Bonus points for edibility: What kid wouldn’t want to munch a tasty blueberry after a ride on a merry-go-round?
Flowers and shrubs at the new KidsUp! will have many qualities, but all should withstand the particular rigors of the playground environment.
“They have to be hardy,” Park District horticulturist Chris Andre says, “and they have to endure a lot of trampling by kids.”
Time and the treading of small feet should pose no challenge for the KidsUp! landscaping. Andre and island gardening maven Ann Lovejoy drew from a rich palette of shrubs and herbs, to create a space of sensory delights and add some welcome shade.
Nine new trees dot the playground, including Venus dogwoods, Sugar Tyme crab apples, and vine maples. Four varieties of oregano will provide ground cover, while waves […]
Clark Construction is a big-time booster for KidsUp! Playground at Battle Point Park. Clark sponsored the Lookout Pier feature with a $5,000 gift and a pledge of volunteer labor.
After the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District construction team built the pier structure and roof, the Clark team stepped in with volunteer hours to finish the job by crafting and installing beautiful railings all around.
Says Clark Construction: “We were all extremely excited to put our carpentry skills to work and actually build a part of the structure our company donated to the […]
Help bring beauty and color to the new KidsUp! Playground at a volunteer planting party, 10 a.m.-noon, Saturday, June 12 at Battle Point Park.
You’ll be planting Northwest native and pollinator friendly trees, shrubs and flowers, around the playground: crabapple, smoke bush, vine maple, dogwood, pink escallonia and a wildflower seed mix.
Pre-registration is required! You’ll register through the Park District to participate in this event. If you haven’t registered for a class or volunteer opportunity with the Park District before, you will need to set up an account online.
Participation is limited to 20 people, and COVID protocols will be in place. Masks are required throughout the event unless you can show proof of full vaccination (card or photo of card).
Volunteers will also be asked a series of questions regarding COVID exposure and symptoms […]
It’s forty-seven feet long, wide enough to race a fleet of tricycles through the middle, two stories high at the funnel, with the familiar forest-green-and white livery of the real thing: a Washington State Ferry.
Scaled down perhaps, but through a child’s eyes, not by much.
“To a little kid,” Doug Slingerland says, “it’s going to feel life size.”
To the fascination of passerby – many of them, wide-eyed future “riders” – the KidsUp! Ferry Boat is almost ready for launch at Battle Point Park.
Working from a handful of schematics and drawings (and sometimes their own intuition), the Park District construction team puzzled the ferry into existence – all steel panels, railings, hatchways, ladders and decking, and the thousands of nuts and bolts and clamps that hold it all together. What in shipbuilding parlance would be the “keel” is a forest of more than three dozen steel stanchions, now cemented into place, around […]
David Franklin was just finding his touch as a professional artist when he was commissioned to create pieces for a new playground called KidsUp!
Schooled in the Northwest Coast Native style, Franklin, of Indianola, saw a dearth of public art on Bainbridge that reflected the island’s first inhabitants and their culture.
Working with red cedar, Franklin carved a large-format Northwest Coast-styled mask and a smaller eagle, figures that would welcome visitors to the playground for the next 20 years.
“This cultural language is something I speak in support of Northwest Native artists,” he says. “It doesn’t represent me per se, but it is a language I’ve learned … A whole generation of Native artists are coming up who are really vital and doing great things. This is from an era where that didn’t happen as much.”
Now, as the playground’s new […]
EVEN BEFORE SHE FOUND A HOUSE ON BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Keri Russo found a playground.
For parents with a young boy in tow with excess energy to burn, the sprawling KidsUp! Playground at Battle Point Park was a must-go during any island visit, the perfect arena for a vigorous youthful romp.
“It was a huge draw,” Russo says, echoing the experience of a generation of island families and visitors who’ve enjoyed the playground over the past 18 years. Even in winter, on all but the crummiest days, you could usually find at least a few kids here, clambering around the wooden ramparts and baileys while their parents looked on.
The kids could defy the weather, but the harsh Northwest elements finally exacted their toll on the playground itself. By the time the aging play structures were taken down in January, the untreated wood was getting so rotten that the pilings and cross-pieces would barely […]
