HARVIN COLUMN: Residents rally to save playground

When Francis Clasby won the Harold Koon Award from the city of Charleston recently, he was honored for helping to raise more than $100,000 for the renovation of the Corrine Jones Park at 36 Marlow Drive. But ask him how he did it, and a saga of neighborhood participation emerges.

He said the project "evolved really fast" when the Charleston County School District announced that it planned to put trailers on the park in conjunction with the demolition of nearby James Simons Elementary.

That alarmed residents who wanted to keep the playground. Clasby helped organize them so that their protests were heard by school district and city officials. Then they decided that they didn't need to settle for just keeping the playground.

Why not find some money to fix it up? With the parents of children involved, the group started looking for serious money. They found it in the Charleston Parks Conservancy and the city of Charleston: $75,000 worth.

Then the Wagener Terrace neighbors raised another $25,000 from fundraisers and picnics. And there was a land swap with the city and the school district so there would not be a threat to the playground again.

But $100,000 doesn't pay for everything, so it occurred to Dave Pastre, a professor at Clemson University's School of Architecture, that he could create a project for some of his landscape students through a draw-and-build course. That meant free labor and design work from the students, with volunteers supplying more manpower. The students got college credit, and the grown-ups got a shaded seating area.

Just doing all that took coordination and keeping people motivated, and Clasby said he has the skill for that, but he readily gives credit to everyone involved.

And keeping everyone involved has spawned another social activity: a Facebook page for the neighborhood to keep everyone posted about meetings and other milestones in the project.

Next up, Clasby says that the parents want to build a buffer between the playground and the soccer field and the basketball court so small kids can play safely.

What was once a scruffy field is now a friendly place for young and old alike to play and sit, and a new sign soon will go up declaring it Corrine Jones Park.

In case you are wondering who Jones was, she was a boxing announcer who lived next to the park, and she shouted louder than anyone else at the children to keep them out of trouble.

It's fitting that neighbors, who only a couple of years ago may have stayed silently in their houses, found their voices and can now shout across the park as they watch the kids.

This is a great example of how a neighborhood can come together and do something wonderful for everyone, with the creative help of our elected officials whose job it is to help facilitate those types of efforts.

If you know of efforts in your neighborhood that are creating change, write me. I would like to highlight the positive efforts helping to make the Lowcountry a better place to live.