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Friends of Hagert Playground Planning For the Future


If you ask Julius Rivera about a playground’s role in community building, he’ll tell you that it is an essential space and a special place.

“Step into my office,” Rivera said as he sat down in the middle of a makeshift drum circle at Hagert Playground on a hot and sunny spring morning. Milk crates and plastic containers served as the percussion while the laughter of diverse groups of children provided harmony in the background. “The playground is a sacred space. This is a place where fights shouldn’t happen, a space that is safe— where there aren’t needles, there isn’t glass. A place where people can walk in and not worry.”

On Sat., May 10 Friends of Hagert Playground, a community group led by Rivera, hosted a gathering at the playground. The space is located on Hagert Street in between Coral and Amber Streets. The event was held during Philadelphia Parks and Recreation’s “Love Your Park Week,” a celebration where more than 100 parks throughout Philadelphia conduct clean ups, outreach events, educational programs, family activities and tours.

Hagert’s event featured a hyper-affordable nursery planter sale, music, free food from Vittle’s Food Truck, games, arts and crafts and, of course, a drum circle. It also featured a playground toy and equipment collection—community members who stopped by were encouraged to donate balls, jump ropes, chalk, and other playthings to be part of playground equipment loan system for local children. The event’s purpose was to get neighbors outside of their homes and enjoy the common area together while also unveiling Friends of Hagert Playground’s plans for a renovation of the space.

“Community Design Collaborative worked with the neighbors to design the dream Hagert Street Playground with green space, separate play areas for big and little kids, lots of shade and plants—all kinds of amazing features,” Ana Bosak, a volunteer at Friends of Hagert Playground, said. The Community Design Collaborative is a community design center that provides free preliminary design services to nonprofit organizations in greater Philadelphia. The organization offers volunteer opportunities for design professionals and aims to raise awareness about the importance of design in community revitalization. “They drew [a conceptual design] up for free. Now to put it into production and construct it we’re looking at $600,000, which is obviously bigger then one neighborhood fundraiser. Now, we’re trying to figure out how to get localized and see what relationships we can build to get sponsors for funding.”

But before discussing Hagert Playground prospective future, it’s important to learn about its past.

“When I moved into the neighborhood 12-13 years ago, the playground was not a good place to be,” Rivera said. “It was a place where people came to have fights, a place where people used drugs or sometimes even sold drugs.”

Rivera began to notice how the tone of the playground really affected the tone of the block as a whole. Knowing that he and his wife had a child on the way, Rivera began to take interest in the well being of the playground.

“If there was constantly drama and violence happening at the playground it spilled out onto our block,” Rivera said. “We wanted to try to develop a sense of community in this neighborhood, but it was really hard to do when there weren’t a lot of people invested in working together to try and build that community.”

So Rivera, a teacher at Pan American Charter Academy, mobilized with a group of like-minded neighbors and began maintaining the playground and embracing the children who socialize and recreate there. For example, in order to address drug dealing, neighbors began to lock the playground’s gates at night to discourage illegal activities. As for graffiti, neighbors began maintain the playground regularly, covering up small tags with positive images and hand-painted murals.

“We are working to make this space as positive a place as we can,” Rivera said. “We want it to be as safe as possible and as useful as possible.”

While Hagert is now a safer and more inviting playground than before, the space continues to struggle in some areas. One issue is a profound lack of shade, something that was duly noted during the event. It also is very open and doesn’t provide much green space—two things that Rivera believes detract from community building.

“Open space is great except for when you are trying to build community and trying to group together,” Rivera explained. “One of things you’ll notice is that when people gather here, instead of sitting on the benches they’ll sit in the equipment. That’s largely because they want to sit near each other and in toward each other. The redesign of the space is pushing for a design where each section will have an inclusive circles aimed toward congregation. We also want the kids to be comfortable with green and know green.”

Community Design Collaborative’s conceptual design for Hagert Playground aims to attack these issues with plenty shaded picnic areas, renovated and/or replaced play structures for various age groups, new fencing, solar lighting, a water spray area, boulder seating for teens and elevated, irrigated gardens with trees placed to collect water runoff and aid street drainage issues. Projected renovations have been estimated to cost $600,000.

As Rivera was explaining the conceptual design, one little boy ran up to Rivera and tugged at his shirt. He smiled and looked down at the boy, handing him a copy of CDC’s design. “This is what the playground is going to like look, Papi,” Rivera said to the child. “It’s going to look nice, we’re going to fix it. It’s going to have trees, see that?”

The little boy responded: “If my family wins the lottery I’ll see if we can pay for it.” He then ran to his mother and whispered into her ear the master plan his innocent mind had just concocted. The boy looked back toward Rivera and shouted with obvious exuberance in his voice, “I have good news, my mom says yes!”

“I knew I could count on you, Papi,” Rivera said with a smile.

The truth of the matter is that the little boy’s family probably won’t win the lottery and that Rivera will have to count on himself and on others to help make this renovation a reality. Once such person is Councilman Mark Squilla of the 1st District.

“Talking to Councilman Squilla, [$600,000] is not as big a number as it may sound,” Rivera said. “For people who are used to nickel and diming projects, it’s a big number. But when you get politicians involved, when you get the water department involved, it becomes a realistic endeavor.”

“I was just telling Julius that I think the key to this is having the energy from the community to really put this thing together,” Squilla said. “As an elected official, seeing Julius take this on makes you want to help even more. Especially as a person who loves playgrounds, I understand that it’s a central point and focus of the whole neighborhood— it’s a place where seniors and kids both come in and enjoy it. So to put this emphasis on it, I’m more than willing to help make this become a reality.”

In the past two years, Rivera estimates that Friends of Hagert has about $75,000 saved up through East Kensington Neighbors Association, some of which will be used toward the renovation process— the neighborhood association has been holding onto Friends of Hagert Playground’s money since the organization has not yet filed for non-profit status.

“We’re going to have to meet with EKNA to see what [the funds] look like. Councilman Squilla said the other $550,000 wouldn’t be hard to get from the city and from the water department,” Rivera said. “Whether all of the money comes through at once or if we have to piece-meal it, we’re going to be here, this has to happen. There’s no reason for it not to happen. Whether it’s two years or 15 years, we want to see this happen. And once it does happen it’s just going to improve the sense of community in the neighborhood.”

You can follow Friends of Hagert Playground by joining their Facebook group. The group will also be sponsoring Family Fun Nights on Monday, Thursday and Friday evenings from 5:30-7:30PM from July 14 through August 22.

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