Working so others can play
Construction begins on Wildcat Park.

Stories by Chuck Westlund
of the Gazette-Times
4 May 1989

With truck horns blasting and children cheering, construction began on the long-planned Wildcat Park project at Wilson Elementary School early Wednesday morning.

Corvallis Mayor Charles Vars and schools Superintendent Thomas Wogaman turned over the first ceremonial shovelfuls of earth at 8:37 a.m., and work began in earnest shortly after.

Hammers thudded, power saws sang and dump trucks grumbled in a construction symphony as at least 80 volunteers began work on the five-day project. It will culminate Sunday in the largest single-structure playground in Benton County.

The park was designed by Robert Leathers of Ithaca, N.Y., a nationally known architect who has built distinctive wooden play structures across the nation for the last 18 years.

This is the fifth Oregon project for Leathers, who has built two structures in Grants Pass and one each in Lake Oswego and Medford.

Three supervisors from Leathers' company are directing the Corvallis project, but the rest of the work is being done by local volunteers.

Volunteers are still needed and welcome, said Katherine Inman, an organizer of the project. The greatest need is for people skilled in carpentry work, she said.

Work aplenty was being done Wednesday morning. Volunteers signed in at a table in the parking lot and were assigned to work crews.

Some hammered boards together. Others worked power saws and routers. Some scooted around on forklifts, hauling bundles of lumber from one point to another.

Others directed dump trucks with loads of gravel and sand. Still others lined up tires on boards stretched across sawhorses, waiting for the classes of school children who will wash them off.

One construction company sent its whole crew to the park for the day. Seven men from Steve Oien Construction of Philomath took the day off and worked on a picnic pavilion at the park. Only two of the men have children in Corvallis schools, and none attend Wilson.

Oien said he brought the crew at the suggestion of Rick South, who owns a construction company Oien subcontracts for -- and also because it just seemed like a good thing to do.

Not all the work involved shovels and hammers. In the school gym, four women worked on slicing a pile of apples and peeling a big bunch of bananas, to be served as snacks on the site.

In the parking lot, a crew worked behind a table signing in volunteers, who trickled in throughout the morning. Volunteers were divided into unskilled and skilled labor, with the basic division being the ability to work power tools properly.

Each volunteer got a list of safety tips.

"We want everyone going home with all their fingers," said Kathy Vetter, working on the sign-in.

Barb Pastega, one of the leaders of the project, said she was pleased by the first-day turnout. She was especially excited by the sight of so many people working together -- people whose paths might not otherwise cross.

"There'll be a lot of friendships made out here in the next few days," Pastega predicted.

Bill Soulier, a city councilman and owner of a 7-Eleven store, expressed similar thoughts.

"This is something the whole community can be proud of," he said during a break. "Not just the playground itself, but the way people are all working together to build the playground."

About the park

Wildcat Park will be the largest single-structure playground in Benton County when completed Sunday evening.

The structure itself will feature slides, swings, tunnels, bridges, mazes, towers, tire nets and a variety of other structures, whose uses are limited only be a child's imagination. Also in the area will be a picnic pavilion, a jogging track and a soccer field.

Included n the play structure will be:

• A total of 33,348 board feet of lumber, along with 1,876 linear feet of support poles.
• Some 1,100 pounds of nails -- more than half a ton.
• More than 15,000 deck screws along with 1,475 lag screws.
• About 250 tons of pea gravel and 21 tons of sand.
• Other items include some 700 bolts, 2,000 washers and 487 feet of chain, to be used on bridges and other play items.

This was from the May 4th, 1989 edition of the Gazette Times.