Residents of the Cranberry area are showing up to lend a hand in the building of the new Kids Castle Playground at Community Park.
The community-build work on the "Today" portion of the new playground began Wednesday and will continue through Sunday.
Cranberry Supervisors Chairman, and Cranberry Township Community Chest treasurer, Bruce Mazzoni—who helped lead the charge to build the Kids Castle—said volunteers are still needed to fill work shifts at the playground on Friday and Saturday.
The shifts are from noon to 4:30 p.m. and from 4 to 8 p.m.
People of all skill sets are welcome to work on the project, which replaces the wooden Playtime Palace.
"We're even getting a lot of people who were involved in the building of the original Playtime Palace," Mazzoni said of the 300 volunteers who signed up to work on the new playground.
Dave Ainello of Play By Design, the company helping Cranberry coordinate the playground effort, said even those who've never held a drill can be put to work painting, staining or even refurbishing wooden pieces from Playtime Palace that will be repurposed into the new playground.
"We like to say there's a job for everybody," Aiello said.
The Kids Castles will have three thematic play areas—Cranberry Yesterday, Cranberry Today and Cranberry Tomorrow.
Earlier this year, CTCC asked children from the community to sketch what they wanted the Today section of Kids Castle playground to include.
Altogether, 3,500 students from Seneca Valley, St Killian's and other local schools submitted drawings of what they wanted. Twenty-five volunteers reviewed each drawing and selected the most popular features for the design and equipment.
The most requested features included a brightly colored structure with multiple-stories and platforms.
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Participants also wanted to be able to climb and descend the structure in interesting ways, including through the use of climbing rocks, slides, posts, and climbing poles of different sizes and shapes.
An entrance gate to the playground will use two of the spires from Playtime Palace, and tie them into the whimsical theme of the Today section.
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The gate also will be included as part of the community build effort, along with fencing made of wood from Playtime Palace.
"Fabulous" is the word Aiello used to describe the layout and landscaping of the future playground."I love the design of this," he said. "I've never seen this level of design on a site."
Mazzoni said the new playground will be close to three times the size of the old Playtime Palace. So far, more than $450,000 has been raised for the Kids Castle project.
Once the Today section of the playground is complete, commercial fixtures for the other sections, as well as the landscaping, will be installed during August.
Additional volunteers will be needed at that time.
The final dedication of the playground is set for Sept. 26.
To sign up for one or more shifts, go to either Cranberry’s website at www.cranberrytownship.org, or the CTCC web site at www.ctcchest.org and click on "Sign up to Help Build Kids Castle."
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