Lower Harbor Kids Cove project seeks donations

Marquette- The chair of the Playground for All Committee Nheena Ittner is on a mission to get the word out on a new groundbreaking project called “The Dream Project” with the mission to clear, replace, and improve the Kids Cove playground at the Mattson Lower Harbor Park.

 “This is a very exciting project and what we’re doing is we’re replacing the decaying Kids Cove playground at Mattson Lower Harbor Park with an all inclusive playground.” 

“So number of years ago, the Parks and Rec Director asked us if we would take all of our efforts in creating an all inclusive playground and move it to the Kids Cove which was starting to fall apart. And so it took us many years to prepare. Then in the spring of last year of 2021, we were awarded a DNR grant towards this project. What that meant is it gave us a green light and that meant that we could bring the community together to talk about what they dream about in this playground. We could bring in experts and we brought in landscape experts, playground experts, and also people who are advocates of disability rights, accessibility experts, and we brought them all together and we designed an all inclusive playground. It’s going to be absolutely wonderful.”

“What it means is that there are going to be actually eight different zones so an able bodied child will have just as much fun, but the unique part of this playground is that all children of all abilities will also have the exact same abilities to interact with the equipment. So the equipment includes everyone and doesn’t exclude anyone. A child in a wheelchair will have just as much fun playing on the structure as an able bodied child.”

The Playground for All Committee has received a DNR grant and to date has collected $600,000 out of $1.3 million dollars needed. It is still early in the fundraising process for the Playground for All Committee and donations can be made at www.kidsCovemqt.com