BRATTLEBORO — The Crowell Park playground provides a serene, natural space for young children to play; one which is, and has been, heavily utilized by parents and their pre-school and school-age children.
As it is now, the playground allows neighborhood children to relax, play, picnic, and interact with one another and with the adults who supervise them. It allows them to run, exercise, and explore freely in a large, open space.
The value of such a playground cannot be easily dismissed.
According to a Sept. 2-4 article in USA Today's USA Weekend:
“Play is serious business. Children need it. Daily. Study after study shows that playtime makes them happier, healthier, smarter and more social. But in American, children are suffering from a play deficit. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that only one in five kids live within a half-mile of a park or playground. And today's kids spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, according to Stanford University School of Medicine.”
The reason is, according to the article, that there are far too few quality outdoor places for young children to play. The article profiles the work of KaBOOM!, a national non-profit organization committed to building, renovating, and improving the quality of America's playgrounds.
KaBoom! honors communities leading the way for offering young children vital access to quality outdoor playgrounds and ranks them “as the best.”
The Save Our Playground Coalition (SOPC) believes that the proposed plan to reassign the playground in Crowell Park - from its current prominent and shaded location to a smaller area that will shoehorn it much closer to the basketball court, and to an area of more sun exposure - threatens the quality of the play area.
In addition to compromising the aesthetic quality of the park, which is conducive to creativity in a developing young mind, installing a 12,000-square-foot concrete structure will also diminish the available area for children to run and explore.
A project the scale of the proposed skateboard park will also undeniably increase environmental noise within the park, noise that stands to overwhelm, distract, and interrupt creative play and socialization.
SOPC recognizes that skateboarding can also provide a valuable form of exercise, socialization, and skill development for some children. Our desire to protect the Crowell Park and the playground does not in any way oppose construction of a skateboard park in Brattleboro.
However, for many reasons, SOPC believes that the current plan to forever alter Crowell Park is poorly conceived, and that the potential benefits for some do not outweigh the larger risks to many, now and in the future.