Volume 3, No. 7. April 11, 2003
Getting
back
It was a community park that gave so much to its community it almost lost itself.
Now, after a decade of seemingly terminal decay, the Rotary Playland in Fresno,
California, has gained a new lease on life thanks to the community giving back.
Opened in 1955, the little kiddie park in the city’s Roeding Park was built
by the local Rotary Club and featured an Arrow Development carousel and a Molina
& Sons kiddie coaster among other rides. Concrete statues of toy soldiers
as trash cans and a lion as a drinking fountain decorate the park. A giant concrete
purple mushroom provides shade to little kid-size toadstools, and wall seats
with tiles of orange, yellow, blue, purple and aqua add color. All proceeds
from the pay-as-you-go park, a total of $2.5 million through the 1980s, went
toward various Rotary charities, said Sam Shima, Playland’s head of operations.
However, little of the proceeds went back into the park itself so the rides
fell into disrepair. In the 1990s as new ride regulations went into effect,
state officials began shutting down some of Rotary Playland’s rides. Three
years ago, only the C.P. Huntington train was operating. A local radio talk
show host, who recalled visiting the park as a child, began publicizing the
park’s plight, and with further impetus from Fresno’s media the area’s
Rotary Clubs were able to generate a fund-raising campaign to rejuvenate the
facility.
The effort raised $250,000 to rehabilitate all the rides in the park and another
$50,000 to paint the rides and improve the park’s aesthetics, as well as
spruce up Storyland next door, a themed park with fairy tale buildings, nursery
rhyme tableaux and playground equipment, built in 1962 and taken over by the
Rotarians in 1994. Included in Playland’s upgrade was a $40,000 refurbishing
of the Arrow carousel, and a “new” Molina & Sons kiddie coaster
for $55,000. When the original Molina coaster was deemed unrepairable, the park
contacted the company and learned the manufacturer had kept one in storage all
these years. So, the park was able to buy the never-used 1955 kiddie coaster,
the last of its kind.
Playland has often received such help from manufacturers, including Guy Sherborne
of Oregon Rides International who has secured three Everly Aircraft rides for
the park and has had a hand in every Playland ride’s renovation. Gradually,
the park's maintenance crew and volunteers brought eight of the rides back up
to standard, but two rides, a teacup and Starfighter, had to be dismantled.
Currently the teacup shed is occupied by a handful of individual coin-op rides,
but the park is hoping to place another ride there. “We have a gentleman
who has a classic tilt-a-whirl ride, and we’re trying to convince him to
donate it to us,” said John Kavanagh, senior ride operator at Playland.
“And Guy Sherborne will lease us one of his classic Spider rides,”
which would go into the spot left vacated by the Starfighter.
One avenue the park hopes to mine for rides is donations. “We’re so
strapped for cash right now, after we spent all that money to fix up all the
rides,” Kavanagh said, noting that the park gets no financing at all from
the city or county. “For us, $20,000 is out of the ballpark.”
Kavanagh, aka Jeff Scott, a local radio personality, was one of those media
members who learned of the park’s plight, visited for a first-hand experience
and last year began moonlighting at Playland—or, rather, sunlighting at
the park since he has a nighttime radio shift. “We’re hoping to get
some donated rides from manufacturers or traveling carnival companies or individuals
who may have the rides in storage, just sitting there not doing anything,”
said Kavanagh, who himself donated a sound system for the carousel and train
station. “We’d like to put those rides to good use, and if they need
to be fixed up we can fix them up. If we could beef up our park to maybe up
to 15 rides, that would be great and we could have a full arsenal.”
Both Playland and Storyland combine to get an annual attendance of 100,000,
said Shima. That figure already is on the rise thanks to publicity surrounding
the park’s rejuvenation, and Kavanagh said the local community is also
rediscovering the park. “We have made a great recovery,” he said.
“We’re a treasure out here.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
©2003, Minton Enterprises
LLC
All rights reserved
