After 7,600 hours of work, kids test-play the new Wildcat Park

Hundreds of kids and their families lined up around a paper chain encircling the new playground at Wildcat Park, waiting for the green light to try out the equipment completed over the past six days.

The countdown from 10 began, an electricity bustling through the crowd like one might expect on New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Tristan, Andraya and Jenessa Montgomery and Jared Lyons, all Wilson Elementary School students, eagerly waited to burst through the chain links and storm the structure.

“It looks really big and fun,” said Jared, 9.

“I think it looks like a big house,” observed Tristan, 9.

“I really want to live in it,” added Andraya, 6, noting that then she could play at Wildcat Park all the time.

Between 300 and 500 volunteers each day have turned out at Wildcat Park since Tuesday, building a replacement structure to be used by Wilson students during school hours and the community at other times.

In total, more than 7,600 hours were spent sawing, nailing, painting and sanding, creating a structure complete with a Benton County Courthouse clock tower, a DNA double helix model, a rock wall and a rocket ship.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, volunteers and their families celebrated completion of the project with cake, ice cream and playing.

Kids were allowed to use the playground for about an hour and a half, but then it had to be closed for the night. The city and the design company, Ithaca, N.Y.-based Leathers & Associates, will do a final inspection today.

The playground should officially open Tuesday or Wednesday, said Mark Hoffman, project organizer.

“This is value added. It’s another dimension to the playground,” said Gerry Kosanovic, Wilson principal. “It brings us back to 1989. Another generation of kids will discover their imaginations as they play on this very creative park.”

Eric Gleske and Maria Gutoski live in the Garfield Elementary School district, but they still felt compelled to help rebuild the Wildcat Park playground at Wilson.

“We just felt we couldn’t play on this playground unless we helped out. We wanted to contribute to something we knew we’d be using,” Gutoski said.

Their children, 4-year-old Murphy and 2-year-old Maggie Gleske, enjoyed testing out the equipment, reaping the benefits of mom’s and dad’s hard work.

“It’s nice, nice like ice,” said Murphy.

Gleske only planned to volunteer a few hours, but ended up spending four days on the construction site.

“It’s just an amazing community project, and Corvallis should be proud that it happened,” he said.

Jill Cox also spent most of last week and the weekend volunteering at the playground. Her children, Brittni Rugebregt, 11, and Ben Rugebregt, 15, both attended Wilson, and they joined their mom in helping build the new playground.

As Brittni scaled the rock-climbing wall, complete with a mountain mural backdrop, Cox finally had a moment to sit back and marvel at the work she and all the many other volunteers accomplished.

“It’s fun to see the kids playing on the stuff you and other people made, and see the smiles on their faces,” she said.

Sunday numbers

Volunteers: 368

Volunteer hours worked: 1,281

Bottles of water consumed: 50 cases

Still needed: Donations for park maintenance