COVINGTON — The front lawn at Sixth District Elementary was transformed into a construction site Wednesday. In only five days, the piles of lumber and mounds of mulch will become a children's playland.

        After six months of planning, work began this week on the Maryland Millennium Playground, a child-designed, community-built project that's brought together bankers and firefighters, parents and students.

Volunteers Tim Stevens, Dan O'Connor and Jack Mohr raise and drop into a hole a 15-foot-long support post for the Maryland Millennium Playground at Sixth District Elementary in Covington. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        A joint project between Sixth District and Holy Family Elementary, the playground is going up on a grassy, fenced lot at Maryland Avenue and 18th Street.
       

Eager volunteers
        “It's amazing to think that in five days there's going to be a playground here,” said Kathy Volpenhein, parent of two students at Holy Family. She surveyed a sea of giant poles jutting into the air that will be the playground's foundation for swings and slides, cargo nets and bridges.

        Mrs. Volpenhein was one of about 60 volunteers who gathered in Sixth District's parking lot Wednesday hammering, sawing and sanding.

        “Most of them have no idea what they're doing or why they're doing it, but we do,” said Dana Cavanaugh, lead construction consultant for Leathers and Associates, an architecture firm in Ithaca, N.Y. “By Sunday, it all comes together.

        “Volunteers are the best group of people you could ever work with because they really care about what they're doing.”
       

Long days

        Leathers and Associates designs about 100 community-built playgrounds a year worldwide. The firm helped build similar playgrounds in Pleasant Ridge, Mount Washington and Colerain Township.

TO HELP

Organizers are still seeking volunteers, tools and donations to help build the Maryland Millennium Playground at Sixth District Elementary, 19th Street and Maryland Avenue.    Walk-ins are welcome. For information, call project coordinator Kathy Gosney, (859) 292-5819.

        But community members have led the project from the start, raising more than $70,000 and recruiting hundreds of volunteers.

        “Playgrounds are important. Children need a place to play instead of running the streets,” said Janell Alexander-Bowen of Cincinnati, who heard about the project through a friend and decided to chip in.

        Volunteer crews will be on site from 8 a.m. to dusk through Sunday.

        “This beats the office anytime,” said Matt Rigg, manager of the Latonia Fifth Third Bank. Fifth Third committed 20 employees a day for three days to help with the project.
       

Help still welcome
        Several businesses and organizations have donated services, supplies and people, but organizers still need more workers, tools and money.

        At least 100 people are needed each day, and about $30,000 is still needed to reach the project's $105,000 goal, said project coordinator Kathy Gosney, who works at Sixth District's family resource center.

        Folks don't have to be master carpenters to help out.
       

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