Courtney’s SandCastle Universally Accessible Playground
Courtney’s SandCastle is a universal playground which will be developed as a part of the Vista Hermosa/La Pata Community Park. It will serve both special need children and adults as well as able bodied children.
The Parks Foundation, the City of San Clemente, and the Junior Woman’s Club came together in 2004 to build the playground, originally planned for Steed Park.
Courtney’s SandCastle is named for Courtney Faye Smith who has been confined to a wheelchair because of a rare muscular degenerative disease – Spinal Muscular Atrophy. When Courtney and her friends visit local parks together, she is unable to participate because of her disabilities as are some 18,000 other children in Orange County with disabilities. Special recreational equipment will also be available to handicapped Marine veterans and other disabled adults.
The playground was designed by Richard Fisher (who built many of the West’s premier universally accessible and traditional parks), and Summers/Murphy & Partners Inc. The playground, along with baseball, soccer, and football fields, and an aquatic center, is expected to open in December 2011.
Some of the components planned for the playground include:
- A simulated 500-square foot castle themed play structure, with sloping wheelchair accessible ramps
- A simulated 150-square foot ship themed play structure, with a stern wheel and talking tubes
- Several interactive water features (floating granite water sphere, raised interactive tide pool, and button activated shooting water)
- A sensory garden with aromatic plants, and bushes and plants
- A musical pathway, producing auditory stimuli
