BY SHANNON MCKEE- SENIOR WRITER MUNICIPAL LEADER MAGAZINE
It was the phone call that every parent dreads. A call from the school in the middle of the day. These kinds of calls are rarely good news. “Hello, Mrs. McKee, it’s XYZ Elementary. We’ve had to call 911 because Caleb was injured on the playground. Can you come over here right away?” Sure enough, one look revealed that he had broken his leg. My son spent the last weeks of the school year and the first part of summer in a full-leg cast, all because of one competitive moment in a game of a tag. He jumped instead of sliding down the “fire pole.” Turns out my dreaded phone call turned into a hard reality for our family.
Parents aren’t the only ones who hate such a call. Every person who cares about kids wants to avoid that phone call, whether it’s a teacher, a principal, a coach or a park director. No one wants to see a child get hurt while in his or her care. If we’re honest, the constant threat of litigation only heightens those feelings.
A quick Google search reveals that playground safety is indeed a hot topic. From equipment to surfacing to landscape, there are many factors to consider. Just this past summer, New York City leaders found themselves embroiled in a controversy about the rubber safety mats they currently use in city playgrounds. The mats soften the blow when kids slip or fall. However, solving one problem seemingly created a new one. Some people were claiming that kids with bare feet were getting burnt just from walking across the mats on hot July days.
Here in Northeast Ohio, our city, park and school leaders face the same issues. What to do about playground surfaces? As you design your city’s parks or consider your school district’s playgrounds, what are the factors that you need to consider? How can you encourage your community’s kids to run and play, and even get a little crazy, but still manage to keep them as safe as possible?
According to Derek Schroeder, director of Parks and Recreation in Twinsburg, there are several factors to consider when deciding about park surfaces. The most important aspects are safety and accessibility issues.
“We start with the type of equipment that is on the playground,” Schroeder said. “How tall is it? Is it a playground for preschoolers or does it have high monkey bars that a child could slip from? Basically, a critical issue is fall height.”
Playgrounds must adhere to specific national and state safety standards. Also, they can submit to voluntary ASTM International standards that rate fall depth. According to the IPEMA (International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association) Web site, falling is the number one cause of injuries on the playground. The site goes on to report that a child who falls on a hard surface, such as concrete or even grass, can be seriously injured or even killed. IPEMA suggests that parents “never allow a child to play on play equipment that is placed over a hard surface such as asphalt, concrete, packed earth or grass.” Instead, the site recommends three surfacing options: certified wood fiber, shredded rubber or artificial surfacing. They stipulate, however, that loose fill materials such as wood fiber or shredded rubber should be at least 9 to 12 inches deep under the equipment.
“Pea gravel was the most common surface 15 to 20 years ago,” Schroeder said. “But the industry has moved away from it primarily because it limits accessibility. It’s not appropriate for us to have it when someone in a wheelchair or walker can’t get on the playground simply because of the surface.”
Twinsburg uses mulch on its playgrounds, as do many other city playgrounds in Northeast Ohio. One advantage of a loose fill playground surface is that it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to find.
“Part of it was a financial decision for us,” Schroeder said. “It is more accessible than gravel or sand, and as long as we lay it on thick, it provides some give when children fall. We also like it because it looks good and has an outdoorsy feel.”
But, Schroeder admitted, it does have its drawbacks. Kids like to pick it up and throw it. Whether thrown or kicked or just moved around, every parent knows that it can get displaced as kids play.
Also, it is not easy to spot dangerous materials such as glass or nails in these types of playground surfaces. For all of these reasons, loose fill surfaces require regular maintenance and replacement.
Even rubber mulch, while it does not have to be replaced each year, has to be maintained when it pushes out from under a high-traffic area like a slide or gets thrown into the grassy areas of the park. If the mulch is displaced outside of the area under the equipment, the concrete footings of the equipment could cause other injuries. Also, some parents have complained that rubber mulch leaves a black residue on hands and clothes.
As a result, many of the newer playgrounds in the region are utilizing other, more permanent, options in their playground surfaces, such as rubber mats, poured-in-place surfaces or artificial grass surfaces. Although initially more expensive than loose fill surfaces, they require very little maintenance. Also, these surfaces do not require containment so displacement is not a problem.
This past June, the city of Ravenna added a 13,000-square-foot playground to its park system. The effort and dreams of many in the community, it was built and funded by Friends of the Park, a non-profit group that then donated the finished park to the city. According to co-founder Amy Michael, going with a more permanent surface was a no brainer.
“Once we examined all the options, it seemed like the obvious choice,” she said. “We spent all this time and effort building a park that the kids would love, and we wanted it to be top-notch. We knew it would cost a little more, but we believed it was worth it. We kind of went with the old adage that ‘you get what you pay for.’”
They ended up with a product that she described as the best of all worlds. It’s an artificial grass surface called Playground Grass™. Made by ForeverLawn®, Inc., it is designed for extreme safety. Playground Grass has been certified by Detroit Testing Laboratories to meet and exceed the ASTM 1292 fall height requirements for up to 12 feet and is certified by the IPEMA. It also looks just like grass.
“We also knew that a permanent surface was the only way to go if we were serious about making it accessible for children with disabilities,” Michael said. “There was a wheelchair-bound boy who approached me when he heard I was helping our community get a new playground. He looked at me with big eyes and said ‘Will I really be able to play on it too?’ How selfish would it be for us to build a new playground and not make it a smooth surface?” Michael said she has since met people from other cities like Garretsville and Mantua who are there because the playground is a great place for their physically-challenged children to play.
“They drive all the way to Ravenna because there just aren’t many other options for kids with disabilities,” she said.
Betsy Kovacic, vice-president for Friends of the Park echoed Michael’s sentiment. “We knew we wanted something with a high safety rating and ADA certification, but most other poured-in-place surfaces were black rubber,” Kovacic added. “Aesthetically, we just loved the Playground Grass. This whole project was an important undertaking for our community. We wanted everything about it to look great and feel great– right down to the surfacing. When we called other cities around the country [who had used ForeverLawn’s Playground Grass], they said it would stay looking great, too.”
Jack Mathison was one of those voices. Mathison is the assistant director for Park, Recreation and the Cultural Arts in Hollywood, Fla. He has used Playground Grass in 16 of his playgrounds over the course of the last four years. He’s been so pleased that he recently expanded his use of ForeverLawn’s products to one of his sports fields.
“I first came across ForeverLawn’s grasses at a conference five or six years ago,” Mathison said. “I’d encountered artificial turf before but this was impressive. I’d never seen anything like it.”
He said that he has no regrets about the switch from loose fill materials to Playground Grass. “For me, it solves a lot of problems,” he insisted. “There’s no more raking mulch back under the slides or dealing with muddy spots under the swings. And, it hasn’t faded or worn – even on the first installations four years ago. It looks great, and we know it’s the safest possible option for the kids who play in our parks. Now, my maintenance guys can focus on other things.”
When dealing with the cost of installing it in 16 parks, Mathison said that they started small. “We did it in one small park first,” he remembered. “We were so pleased that we just kept adding it where we could. We usually built it right into the cost of our capital improvement projects. I know it’s not an inexpensive way to go, but the versatility has been phenomenal.”
Mathison has even gotten creative, using a version of ForeverLawn’s grass in some of the parks’ high-traffic areas. “We fanned it out into one of our problem areas where people regularly accessed an athletic field,” he said. “We could never get grass to grow there, and it just always looked bad. Now, it’s not even a thought.”
One of the clearest signs of his innovative success has been community feedback. “I’m getting phone calls from citizens who love the playground surfaces,” Mathison said. “I’m sure most directors can agree with me on this – we don’t get those kinds of phone calls very often. When we do, we need to take notice.”
While ForeverLawn has been growing into markets around the country, it is still fairly new to Ohio. Doran Wengerd partnered with a friend to open a franchise in Hartville after he discovered ForeverLawn while researching the possibility of using synthetic turf on an executive par-three golf course in the Northwest.
“I was amazed at how much it looked like real grass,” he said. He was so impressed, he said, not only by the product but by the integrity of the owners, that he uprooted his entire family and relocated to Ohio within one year. Why? To open a ForeverLawn dealership here with his old friend and flooring installation expert, Kevin Beachy.
Being local is part of the philosophy of the company to ensure quality service. For example, Lake High School recently resurfaced their football field with ForeverLawn’s SportsGrass™ product. “We want to be nearby so that if they need anything we’re right here,” Wengerd said. “That means we have a local presence, and that means I live right here. If they need something, they’re not calling some guy who flew in from the West Coast to install. They’re calling me. I like that part of the business.”
While Wengerd is convinced his product is worth it in the long run, he knows that city budgets are often tight and money is probably the biggest drawback to his surfaces. He suggested grants and corporate sponsors as ways to help offset some of the cost.
“Because our grasses are made with 65 percent recycled materials and help with water conservation [because there is no watering], some cities have had success with getting ‘green grants,’” he mentioned. Community improvement grants and grants for disability-friendly parks are also worthy options. The Ravenna playground used donations from families and corporations to make the community’s high hopes a reality.
Certainly there are many factors that need considered regarding the surfaces for quality parks and playgrounds in our region. The questions range from appearance to accessibility to the “Green Factor” to cost to safety. The answers aren’t always clear.
Could Playground Grass have averted my dreaded phone call and my son’s full-leg cast? We can’t know for sure; but after lifting and carrying my 8-year-old son around for eight weeks of his summer, I would say it’s certainly worth considering. NEO
To contact ForeverLawn of Ohio email Doran Wengerd at doran@ohio.foreverlawn.com, call 330.614.9390 or visit www.ohio.foreverlawn.com.
