Designed for parity, built to party

From a distance, it yells “fun.” Up close, it whispers “compassion.”

On a sunny February afternoon, I counted at least 65 kids, parents and caregivers swarming all over Play Michigan!, the colorful, $3.3 million all-access playground that opened Sept. 16 at the southeast corner of Grand Avenue and Saginaw Street.

Who wants to wait for that proposed downtown skyscraper? Right now, you can behold the skyline of downtown Lansing and look down on the shimmering Grand River from an 8-foot tower full of laughing, screaming kids.

This is no ordinary facility. Everything here is designed for “parity of play” between kids who have physical disabilities, autism, sight impairment and other disabilities, and kids who don’t.

The nonprofit Capital Region Community Foundation and private donors paid for the 1.75-acre park. The city contributed $300,000 for a parking lot and River Trail upgrades.

Trey Armstead, 5, of Lansing, enjoys the zip track.

The place may look like a huge, overturned bucket of candy, but everything here has been carefully designed and built for multiple purposes. On the day I visited the park, playground equipment specialist Rich Sinclair was about to explain the workings of the tower in greater detail when a red-haired boy zoomed past us, devouring a banana.

I asked Sinclair if the playground’s state-of-the-art design accounted for castoff banana peels.

“We account for everything,” Sinclair said. “I’m not even going to tell you the things kids drop that we account for.”

Eight feet below, the playground’s poured rubberized surface — the first such surface in a Lansing park — is spongy but durable, resistant to everything from banana peels to the Grand River in raging flood.

That rubber saw plenty of action in late fall and winter. On Dec. 25, I saw at least two dozen people in the park, working off a holiday brunch.

“We are really happy with the way Lansing has responded to the park, and we haven’t even hit an out-of-school time yet,” Lansing parks director Brett Kaschinske said.

As the weather warms up in earnest, it’s time for a closer look at the visionary planning, design and construction of Lansing’s newest downtown gem, from the rubber up.

Perceived risk is fun

The idea behind Play! Michigan isn’t for kids with disabilities to have a special place to play. It’s for them to lose themselves in the mix of humanity and the joy of movement alongside everyone else.

The gangway to the top of the tower is gently sloped so a person in a mobility device can get to the summit. Safety requirements limited the ramp’s steepness to 1 foot in height for over 12 feet in length, so designers had to fold the gangway into a dozen crazy and unpredictable angles to pack it into a workable space. The tower is so packed with surprises that kids never seem to tire of zig-zagging to the top, sliding down and starting all over.

Sinclair is the co-owner of Sinclair Recreation, a Michigan-based company specializing in playground and park equipment. He and his wife, co-owner Diane Sinclair, have been in the playground equipment business for 34 years.

It’s not just for kids: “This is awesome,” says Kale Smith of Lansing. “We were so excited when we found out an all-inclusive park was …

“It feels like a lot higher than 8 feet, doesn’t it?” Sinclair asked when we got to the top of the tower. “If you spend the majority of your life seated in a mobility device, at a ground level, the opportunity to look down at somebody else, to have that perspective, is pretty rare. It changes your perspective on the world.”

Usually, kids have to plunk themselves down on the floor from a mobility device to get into position at the top of a slide.

“Not only is there an ergonomic concern, there’s also a dignity issue,” Sinclair said. “I have to get on the ground to do that, which I’m probably not going to do easily or with grace.”

Here, kids in wheelchairs can transfer onto a raised step, swivel around and plummet, screaming, like every other kid.

As the main tower ramp climbs, the slides get higher, along with the level of “perceived risk” (Sinclair’s term for “fun”).

The helpful steps at the slide entrances are unobtrusive, even though they’re painted a different color for the benefit of kids with vision impairment. The steps also make it easier for arthritic adults who haven’t been to a playground since the Bicentennial to take a plunge or two.

Subtly integrated gates, narrow enough to stop any wayward wheelchairs, guard all the entrances from the ramp to the slides and ladders.

However, anyone who thinks an all-access playground has to trade thrills for safety will be shocked by the almost dead-vertical slides that drop from the tower’s higher levels.

“Sliding is meant to simulate falling or flying,” Sinclair explained. A mad glimmer showed in his eye. “You can see that slide is fairly steep. If you have to scoot your butt down that slide, it’s not doing its job. We’ve got maximum angles of descent.”

The gangway bristles with every bell and whistle imaginable to provide a continuous flow of all-inclusive, stealthily educational chaos. There are bongo drums, color wheels, finger mazes and magic telephones to the unseen kid beneath you. It’s not unusual to see a mesmerized kid spin the pachinko panels and watch the little beads tumble around for 15 or 20 minutes.

Near the top of the tower is a double slide where two kids can race, side by side, to Mother Earth. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t matter if you are disabled. It’s always going to end in a tie. As Galileo demonstrated in 1590 at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, all objects accelerate toward the center of the Earth at the same rate. If equal access is woven into the fabric of gravity, why should a park be any different?

Pearl on the river

In peak hours, Play Michigan! generates an impressive level of pandemonium. Responding to advice from members of the local autism community, designers added quiet corners for over-stimulated kids.

The secluded benches are also a good place to take a break from hurtling to and fro and soak up a bit of background.

Cecelia Scholten, 10, of Lansing, practices skating.

Play Michigan! is the second major piece in a “string of pearls” designed to bring people to the Grand River in downtown Lansing, according to Community Foundation President Laurie Baumer.

The most recent major bead on the string was Rotary Park, a $2.5 million cluster of play areas, hangouts and attractions completed in fall 2018, also funded mostly by the Community Foundation.

In 2018, Linda Zylstra, a Foundation board member, suggested that an all-access playground would be a perfect addition to the string.

Zylstra has worked for over 20 years with Chosen Vision, a DeWitt-based nonprofit that operates five group homes for developmentally disabled adults in Grand Ledge, Westphalia and DeWitt.

She signaled that she and her husband, Joel, would happily invest in an all-access playground. Not only did the Zylstras come up with the idea for the park; they gave a “major gift,” Baumer said.

Zylstra shrugged off the recognition. “We were a very small part of this,” she said. “It’s easy to give an idea. The Community Foundation just took the ball and ran with it.”

Baumer told a fellow board member, CASE Credit Union CEO Jeffrey Benson, about the idea, only to learn that CASE had already raised money to build a similar playground and bought some equipment. The project was on hold, the equipment was in storage and the money raised was still available.

It almost seemed like a sign from above. Sensing momentum for the project, Baumer made the rounds of board members and donors, and all of them responded enthusiastically. Kaschinske and Lansing Mayor Andy Schor loved the idea.

“Once you’ve got that kind of synergy, it’s a go,” Baumer said.

1,000 tons of rip-rap

From the start, Baumer pushed hard for a downtown riverfront site.

“Every kid needs to have the ability to enjoy a river, a body of water,” she said. “Oftentimes they don’t. They don’t go near a dock, near a boat. This gives them a safe way to enjoy something that other kids always get to enjoy.”

A wide riverfront deck, big enough for two wheelchairs to pass each other, was “critical” to the project, in Baumer’s view.

Landscape architect Tim Britain and a team from Viridis, a Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids architectural firm, designed the park surrounding the play area.

“Laurie was very adamant that we needed to get this user group close to the water, so they could see that river and enjoy its beauty,” Britain said.

By design, the river is a presence everywhere in the park, especially when viewed from the top of the play tower.

“This was hard for some people to understand,” Baumer admitted. “Why the river? Our whole goal is to embrace the riverfront, make it more vibrant, more user-friendly and accessible to people, and, in doing so, create a more vibrant downtown.”

“We’ve tried to create a true destination playground,” Kaschinske said. “Placing it right downtown, right on the Grand River, and tying the river to the project made it more than a playground. Groups that come to the Capitol — this is just a few blocks from that.”

Landscape designer Tim Britain of Viridis said riverfront recreation is a welcome trend he’s seen in his 35 years in the urban design trade.

“For ages, they were just our sewers,” Britain said. “We just dumped stuff in them. In our infinite wisdom, we decided that they are important for recreation and so many other things and decided to take care of them.”

Britain praised the Community Foundation’s determination to embrace the riverfront. He recalled that when he studied at MSU in the 1980s, he only ventured to Lansing to hang with friends who were bellhops at the Radisson.

“The image the city had — it was rough,” Britain said. “Everybody came to East Lansing then. Like a lot of our urban areas, there’s been a remarkable transition in Lansing in the last 30 years.”

But building a playground on a river was a major task for project manager Rhonda Franck of Wieland, the head contractor.

“When you have a project along the river, it looks great, but it presents a lot of challenges,” Franck said.

Soon after ground was broken on the park in May 2023, more than 800 cubic yards of rip-rap (boulders) — about 1,000 tons — were heaped onto the riverbank to control erosion and serve as a safety buffer between the playground and the river. The boardwalk was secured to the riverbank by 36 timber piles.

There were challenges inside the playground as well.

“I think we were on vision 13 or 14 by the time we were done,” Diane Sinclair said. “Laurie just wanted to make it perfect.”

The rubberized surface had to be durable, safe and resistant to flooding, but the design team reached beyond functionality to create a work of art.

The viscous goo was poured onto the ground from wheelbarrows and carefully smoothed out. A second layer was painstakingly laid in stages, color by color, to form images of the Great Lakes, a robin and her nest, an apple blossom and other Michigan-specific images.

The park gets a lot of sun, so extra care was taken pouring concrete to anchor a heavy-duty tensile shade structure. (Don’t call it a tent. The engineers don’t like that.) While their kids are running around, engineering nerds might want to check out the Mackinac Bridge-scaled turnbuckles holding the roof of the structure to its elephantine, triple-thick metal pillars.

“That shade structure is not going anywhere,” Franck said.

Jasmine Schieberl, 8, of Lansing, enjoys the net climber

The high-quality materials and specialized equipment used in the playground and surrounding park didn’t come cheap. Construction costs skyrocketed in the wake of the pandemic and consequent supply chain problems, pushing the budget from a projected $1.6 million to $3.3 million. More than $1.6 million came from the Community Foundation, while private and corporate donors stepped up to fill the gap. CASE Credit Union provided a $100,000 gift as part of its “CASE Cares” program. Other corporate donors included AF Group, University of Michigan Health, Mary Free Bed and Peckham. Three major gifts from individual donors, including the Zylstras, topped $500,000.

The project demanded constant and often complicated communication among all the major players — Wieland, Viridis, the city of Lansing, Sinclair and a small army of subcontractors.

“The team effort was more exceptional than I’ve ever experienced as project manager,” Franck said. “And it had to be, because it was so important it be done safely.”

“Laurie wants nothing but the best,” Kaschinske said. “That is awesome to get on a team like that. They’ve got the means to fund this and make it what it is, make it the best.”

Weeks before the scheduled opening, while the playground equipment was still being installed, Wieland workers had to drop their trowels and screwdrivers more than once a day to tell disappointed families, including crying kids, that the park just wasn’t ready yet.

“That’s when we knew it was going to be a hit,” Franck said.

Inclusive whirl

While the riverfront park took shape, the Sinclairs and the Community Foundation team sweated over every detail of the project’s most crucial component — the playground equipment.

Working with the Disability Network Capital Area, planners considered hundreds of critical questions — the variety of play, spacing between objects, signage and use of braille, and much more.

Montgomery Brooks, 6, spins his siblings, Avery 2, and Kendal, 11, on the Inclusive Whirl.

The Disability Network helped Baumer’s team conduct a survey of 50 Lansing area families.

Diane Sinclair said the input from actual users and their families was invaluable.

“It gave us solid ideas we hadn’t thought of,” Baumer said.

The isolated time-out benches sprang from input from the autism community. At first, the park design included a variant of the classic tire swing. The parent of a child with autism told Diane Sinclair that her child loves to lie down on a swing and rock back and forth. The result is a swinging magic carpet upon which you can stretch out and look straight up. The swing also bears up under half a dozen kids at a time when the occasion demands.

Even so simple a piece of equipment as the classic playground swing set is a seminar in inclusive design. Next to a set of traditional belt swings are “expression” swings, or double-seaters that allow a caregiver and child to face each other. (Kids also love to double up on them just for kicks.) Farther to the right are high-backed adaptive seats for people who need more support. One has a protective hard harness; the other has an open back to allow transfer from a mobility device.

Like everything else in the park, no matter the underlying function, the seats are colorful, inviting and fun. On our tour of the park, Rich Sinclair climbed into the hard-harness support seat, kicked back, clicked himself in and beamed like an astronaut.

His voice came in and out of earshot as he swung. “KIDS with special needs often HAVE, by necessity, a more latent LIFESTYLE,” he explained. “This STYLE of seat supports a VARIETY of body shapes and SIZES.”

A few feet away is the popular “inclusive whirl,” an all-access variant of the “run like crazy, jump on maybe lose a foot” merry-go-rounds of yore.

This one is built so that people in wheelchairs can slide right into the circle, at ground level, and spin to their heart’s content. The design encourages frequent outbursts of “co-operative play,” a Holy Grail of inclusive playgrounds.

“Someone in a mobility device stops by to enjoy the whirl, and their able-bodied peers take great joy in spinning them,” Sinclair said.

One of the most popular pieces of equipment here is as simple as they come — a chair you can sit and spin around in to your heart’s content.

“One of the largest growing sectors of the special needs population is in autism spectrum disorder,” Sinclair said. “Experts tell us spinning is a very calming, centering activity for them.”

There are lots of extras to discover on the playground’s periphery walkway. Metallic chimes, in the form of flower-like stalks with four petals, encourage impromptu duets.

“Most of these go ‘klunk,’” Sinclair said. “These actually make music.”

In a sneaky touch, the two stalks are harmonically tuned to sound great together, but most kids can’t reach both at once. It takes a partner.

“It’s a very unobtrusive way for two people who don’t know each other to have a play experience together,” Sinclair said.

Amber Yarger of Lansing, and her son Rowan, 3, scoping out the playground.

‘Get out there’

None of the principal players in the development and construction of Play Michigan! were interested in creating a “hidden gem.” (The exclamation point should have tipped you off.) An enormous sign throws the bouncy logo onto busy Saginaw Street, all but daring drivers to ignore the cries of “Oh daddy, can we go?” coming from the back seat.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of people that have driven by and seen it, or their kids saw it, and either that car had to turn onto Grand Avenue then, or it would in the near future,” Kaschinske said.

From the road, the colorful apparatus is an eye-catcher, but, by design, the heart of the park is carefully hidden. The seamless mix of equipment for people with disabilities and everyone else deeply impressed designer Britain.

“Other parks we’ve designed are inclusive of kids with disabilities, but this was a very unique charge,” Britain said. “This is the prime user group it’s designed for, and the rest of the population gets to enjoy it. The design is invisible, and that’s how it should be. It’s for everybody.”

Kaschinske said he’s seen a sharpened appreciation for outdoor recreation in general, owing largely to the pandemic, and “people have kept that momentum up.”

“That’s why you’re seeing the numbers you do at this playground,” he said. “It really hits so many aspects of what we, as human beings, crave for ourselves and our kids. The diversity of ages, abilities, socio-economic groups — it’s free, and that’s what our parks mission is.”

Kaschinske got so excited talking about the park that he broke some kind of fourth wall and addressed the reader directly.

“When’s the last time you were on a swing?” he exhorted, as if he were doing a TV spot. “Get out there and enjoy it.”

Photos by Raymond Holt