Disabled Playground Near Bike Path Too Risky, Residents Say

Its white sails will billow in the wind, periscopes will encourage children to seek out distant views of the sea and ripple-like circles of rubberized matting will create the illusion of water.

After two decades, the city has finally designed a playground fit for children with disabilities. Once constructed at 2900 Ocean Front Walk, on the site immediately south of the southernmost beach parking lot in the city, the play equipment will look like a buried clipper ship, and it will boast plenty of multi-sensory equipment.

"This is something we should've done long ago," Mayor Richard Bloom said. "It ought to be the norm in every community; the norm, not the exception."

Although the playground was praised Tuesday night by the City Council—which unanimously approved the design—its location has drawn criticisms from residents of the nearby Sea Colony track.

They say that the playground, while universally accessible, is not necessarily "universally safe."

Primarily, they've aired concerns that disabled children crossing the bike path to the south to get to the public restrooms will be struck by cyclists, and that parents driving to and from the site will congest traffic in front of neighborhood's driveways.

"The playground [will be] surrounded by what looks and feels like a freeway ... people get knocked down all the time," said mother and competitive cyclist Louise Keoghan.

One resident is alarmed that it might attract the homeless and gangs from nearby Venice, increasing public sex, urination, violence and drug use in the area.

So before the playground is built, city planners will look into how to improve safety at the bike paths, including the possibility of installing flashing lights at the crosswalks.

Councilman Bobby Shriver called it a "major league issue." He said he at one time felt like killing a cyclist who nearly ran over his 3-year-old daughter at the playground at the Annenberg Community Beach House.

"The people who are biking will not stop ... this interaction between children and people on fast bikes is a really serious matter," he said.

The fact that the park will include a tall ship and be enveloped with a 42-inch fence sheathed in vines will only make visibility for cyclists worse, said Councilman Robert Holbrook.

But other council members like Gleam Davis said the visibility issue is one that exists along the entire stretch of the beach, and not just in Santa Monica. A kite flyer using clear fishing wire once cut her husband in the lip as he zoomed along a beach bike path, she said.