Thousands of volunteers came together more than 20 years ago to build the Celebration Station playground on Charleston's East End. The project took only a few days to build from the ground up.
An initiative of Christ Church United Methodist, it took a year of planning from a Sunday school class and thousands of dollars worth of donations from businesses and individuals.
The playground was supposed to last 20 years. Twenty-three years later, the park needs a face-lift.
Now the future of the park's renovations and repairs are in limbo.
An oversight group, Friends of Celebration Station, had been in charge of maintaining the playground since it opened. Friends of Celebration Station is dissolving, according to the group's president, Lesly Messina. Now it's unclear who will step in to take care of the park.
Kanawha County Schools pays liability insurance for the playground because Piedmont Elementary students use it daily. The City of Charleston ceded responsibility for the space when it was built.
The group only had $2,000 left in its renovations fund, which has been transferred to Piedmont Elementary School's principal. But Celebration Station needs more - Messina said the park needs an entire new play structure.
"The community does need to know what is happening," Messina said. "I'm concerned about its future."
Messina said the group had plans to restore the park last year. A group of volunteers from the University of Minnesota participated in a large-scale cleanup of the park to remove broken and obsolete equipment. They also reached out to the playground's original designer Ithaca, New York-based Robert Leathers & Associates.
But when they received a bill of estimated costs, Messina said she was shocked. It would cost more than $250,000 for the playground to be fully renovated.
The group started to fundraise, but people weren't able or interested in donating. It raised $10,000.
Most of that has already been spent to put new mulch into the park in the fall. Volunteers came together to move the mulch, rolling wheelbarrows full of it into the park.
Even now, people call Messina asking if she needs help.
"The interest is still there," she said. "People are still reaching out to us."
But Messina said she and other members of the group need to take a step back. She said taking care of the park became too time consuming, and she didn't have as much time as she needed to properly maintain it. Plus, her daughter is going to middle school in the fall, so she won't have as close of a connection to the elementary school.
"It became so daunting for me. I had to figure out the amount of effectiveness I, and we, could have," Messina said.
She's encouraging parents and community members to step in to form their own committees to raise money for the park.
Because the park is public, there are occasional disturbances. People who are homeless sleep underneath the shelter because it provides them a safe place. Criminal activity occasionally happens at the park overnight.
She said she still has hope that the park will be renovated.
"People still care. People still bring their families there," Messina said.
She encouraged Kanawha County Schools to take more of a hands-on approach with renovating the park by providing both manpower and funding.
Briana Warner, communications director for the school district, said the school system will consider maintaining the playground itself, but the size of the park may be too much for it to handle. She said the district will consider other community partners for help with improvements to the park.
Ric Cavender, a school board member and executive director of Charleston Main Streets, said keeping the park maintained is essential.
He has a special interest, too - both of his children will attend Piedmont Elementary this fall.
He said the park is past due for attention, and he hopes the school district will invest in making sure it's maintained.
"We certainly don't want to see it turned into an area with inappropriate behaviors or vandalism," Cavender said.
He said he plans to discuss solutions for maintaining the park with fellow school board members.
"It's very important to keep Celebration Station at the forefront of our minds," Cavender said.
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