A new shade structure to improve an inclusive school playground in Lawrence is set to be finished this week, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony planned to celebrate it.
Hillcrest Elementary School has partnered with a KU design-build studio class instructed by Keith Van de Riet, associate professor of architecture, to install a shade structure over the picnic table area at the school’s accessible playground, the Ryan Gray Playground for All Children.
Van de Riet’s class “designed and fabricated an 800-square-foot pavilion and companion rain garden with native plantings to provide shade and ecological benefits for the Ryan Gray Playground for All,” according to a KU news release.
Over the summer, the Hillcrest Elementary Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) was fundraising for the project.
The Lawrence school board on Monday approved the district’s financial support, including up to $15,000 from its capital outlay fund in addition to $25,000 from grants and gifts. The university “generously supports around $60,000 with in-kind labor and business partnership support,” according to the agenda. Board members unanimously approved the allocation as part of their consent agenda — a list of items that are generally approved with one vote, unless a board member or the superintendent asks to discuss an item.
KU students working on the project are third-year architecture majors who have prior experience with drawings, conceptual development, computational design and model making. With the shade structure project serving as a case study, Van de Riet’s class is designed to advance those skills. It also allows students to give back to their greater community.
The class has spent the past few weeks of the fall semester on construction at the playground. Van de Riet said Hillcrest students have supported them as they work by making signs, chanting and cheering, and bringing treats to share.
“I’m watching the KU students become role models in front of the children — it’s about all you could ask for as an instructor,” Van de Riet said in the release.
The shade structure is one of the largest projects ever undertaken by one of Van de Riet’s classes, he said. He expects it will be completed by Friday, the end of KU’s finals week.
First opened in 1993, the playground commemorates the late Ryan Gray, a former Hillcrest student. Gray was born with an inoperable brain tumor and used a wheelchair from sixth grade on. He died at age 17 in 1990. Gray had represented inspiration — a “good luck charm of sorts” — for the 1988 KU men’s basketball national championship team.
When the playground in 2016 underwent a $375,000 renovation, it was considered the first fully accessible playground in Kansas.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new structure is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15 — which is also Gray’s birthday — at the playground, 1045 Hilltop Drive. It’s free to attend and open to the public.
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
