National Basketball Association Orlando Magic community ambassador and former Magic forward Bo Outlaw, left, pours a batch of concrete that he mixed to support a series of stepping obstacles at the renovated park at the Oak Street Community Center in Kissimmee.

By Juliana A. Torres
Staff Writer

About 300 volunteers descended on Oak Street Community Park Wednesday to build a new playground, complete with a stage, a village of tiny houses and streets paved for tricycles and a giant map of the United States.

The city of Kissimmee’s newest playground was built by the national nonprofit group Kaboom! with the help of about 200 Orlando Magic employees and 100 local volunteers organized by Community Vision and Habitat for Humanity of Osceola.

Preparation for the park began Monday, with the completion of sidewalks in and around the park among other things, and culminated in the rush of volunteers early Wednesday morning.

“This is a phenomenal turnout,” said Mike Dunn, project manager with Kaboom! “Six hours, 300 people and we’re done.”

A ribbon cutting for the new park was held at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon.

“I think it’s so great that it’s not just a playground, it’s tons of stuff,” Kelly Bender, project manager for Community Vision said, adding that her favorite part was the “very cute” stage with the “little seats.”

Organizers took ideas from local children at Thacker Elementary School and the city’s Camp Discovery program to incorporate into the park. Jan Mead, a volunteer on Wednesday and grandmother of two children who have participated in some of the programs at the Oak Street park, said she thought it was important for local residents to contribute to improvements in their neighborhood.

“I think it’s good,” she said, adding that many of the children in the area live in town houses that have little room for having fun. “They’ve got to have room to play.”

The Orlando Magic closed its offices Wednesday to volunteer its full-time staff to Kissimmee to help build the playground. The project is the fourth in as many years in which the basketball franchise has contributed to give Central Florida children a safe place to play, Alex Martins, chief operating officer for the Magic, said.

“We get here every year and we say ‘How are we ever going to do this in six hours’ time?’ And it’s just amazing how, with a lot of hard work and a lot of teamwork, you can transform this portion of the community into a beautiful playground,” Martins said.

Andrae Kock, foreman with the city’s parks and recreation department, said the idea for the park came to the city’s attention last year. In applying for the Kaboom! grant and program, organizers found they could do the separate projects apart from the basic playground equipment. Kock came up with the idea for the tiny village, with sidewalks lined with traffic signs going from building to building.

The setup, like many aspects of the park, is educational as well as colorful, he said. The original idea was to make the village completely surround the park, but there were too many roadblocks, he said.

Even after the project was officially completed Wednesday afternoon, the parks and recreation department would have a few leftover projects to complete before children could play on the new playground, Kock said.

“Overall, it’s a great thing to bring these people together,” Kock said. “There’s a couple of bumps in the road since you’re working with 300 volunteers. They’re all willing to do something and work but don’t quite know exactly what they’re doing. But it’s OK. We know that from the beginning.”