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Vol. 2, No. 2
Saturday, February 12, 2000
Our next Wellington Park meeting will take place on Wednesday evening February 16, 2000, at 7 PM at the home of Ellen Andrews, 51 Princess Road, West Newton. This is where we had our first play committee meeting, just outside the northeast gate of Wellington Park. If you cannot attend, please submit any thoughts or comments to our email address, WellingtonPark@aol.com or phone them to 969-6222 (answering machine) or directly to Lorraine Miller, Play Committee chairperson (969-8651, atrain@tiac.net). At the meeting we will be discussing the Newton Serves volunteer day on April 9, the play structure proposals, and our fundraising campaign. We are also expecting a presentation at 8 P.M. by Mark Gallagher of Little Tykes. Thanks to Lorraine Miller for organizing the meeting, Ellen Andrews for hosting it, and Ann Dorfman for phoning those without email!
We have tentatively been approved as a "Newton Serves" project on April 9 this year by the Newton 2000 committee. This will be too early for our build day but we will have a fair number of volunteers (not necessarily from the immediate neighborhood). This will be in conjunction with other volunteer projects all over Newton. At our meeting we would like to discuss and solicit ideas for projects that could be done on that day at Wellington Park (e.g. do a glass sweep, re-seed / lime the field, plant flowers, bulbs or tree, paint the fences, fix the gates, clear brush at the edge, etc.). Of course, you are all urged to volunteer for this or any other of the 50+ Newton Serves projects scheduled for that day. Myra Tattenbaum of Newton 2000 will be our Wellington project director. Thanks to Lorraine Miller for all her work submitting us for consideration!
At the meeting, we will be considering the play structure proposals received. Please check out the bulletin board at Wellington Park and our web site (http://wellingtonpark.8m.com) to view the current proposals. A modified one from GameTime will be posted shortly. We are hoping to put some paper copies of the Wellington News and proposals at the park bulletin board for those who don't have web access.
Three vendors are under consideration currently, Landscape Structures, Little Tykes and GameTime. An additional GameTime proposal will be added to the four current proposed configurations. We need to select a vendor in the near future so any input as to your opinions on structures by these vendors would be most valuable. Landscape Structures equipment is commonly found in Newton (e.g. Webster Common (Elm and Webster), River Street, and Fessendon School). GameTime may be found at Learning Prep School (just over the Mass Pike on Route 16, on the right after the funeral home and before St. Bernard's church) and behind the Jackson School (which is behind the Jackson Homestead on Washington Street). Little Tykes is commonly used in Waltham playgrounds. The closest to us may be the Peter Gilmore Playground at High St. and Lowell. This is on the right halfway going between the old Mass Hardware and Moody St. (Hanlon's Shoes). Others are at Brandeis University, and at Trapelo and Lexington in Waltham. If you are concerned about the structure selection, make a point to check out some of these structures and which features you like or dislike before the meeting. Lorraine Miller, Eleanor Ambrosio, Jane Quinn, and Ellen Andrews are some of those who have made the effort to go out and look at many of the other playgrounds in the area so far.
At 8 P.M. we expect to have a play structure presentation by Mark Gallagher of Little Tykes. The Gilmore playground in Waltham is the closest to us done by Little Tykes. There are actually two structures there, on the left for older kids and on the right for younger kids. The structure on the right may be somewhat comparable to their proposal for us. If you visit this playground, you will also notice the nice park sign that Waltham provides for all its parks. We will get a more detailed analysis of their proposals and learn more about what play options are included, how the structures would fit into our site, and what are the unique features of their proposal. We hope to have additional presentations at other meetings in the near future from other vendors.
Our fundraising campaign is off and running this week. Thanks to those who already responded to our email campaign at the end of December. We have two forms of our letter, one for local businesses and one for neighbors. We have added a map to the letter to make sure that businesses in particular know the location of Wellington Park. Thanks to our fundraising chairperson, Nancy Davis and her husband Tom Davis, for putting these together for us. Nancy will be contacting local businesses. If you know any businesses that might be interested in helping us, please contact Nancy Davis (princessned@yahoo.com) for copies of the letter. Eleanor and Don Ambrosio have been responsible for printing up our letters. Jane Quinn is our coordinator for local neighborhood distribution. She and her husband Don are often out walking and may be dropping something our light blue letter in your mailbox shortly. If you would like to help volunteer to distribute the letter on your street please contact Jane (jdquinn5p@rcn.com, 332-3191). We will have copies of the letter at the meeting for distribution.
If you were thinking of making a donation, please do it soon so that we will have a better idea of just how much we can allocate for the play structure. At the moment we may be really counting on $2-3K in fundraising to afford the current proposals. In addition to the structure itself, we need to pay for supervision, Fibar, swings, etc. Otherwise, we will have to adjust the structure by removing components to meet our budget. Please send checks to our non-profit sponsor Newton Community Service Centers Inc., Wellington Park Fund, 492 Waltham Street, Newton, MA 02465. By the way, check out NCSC's new web site at http://www.ncscinc.com.
Please get on our email list. You will receive the news directly by email. It is the fastest and easiest way for our organization to keep in touch. Just send an email to WellingtonPark@aol.com. And of course, check out our web site http://wellingtonpark.8m.com. If you are not wired, just read our high tech bulletin board at the park.