The City of Santa Barbara is moving forward on a plan for a renovated Dwight Murphy Field, including a $6 million accessible playground.
The Parks & Recreation Department held an outdoor meeting Thursday at the park on Ninos Drive to talk about the plan. Representatives from the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation also were in attendance.
The vision for a new park includes a regulation-size soccer field, a youth baseball field, an outdoor fitness area, new sidewalks around the park, restrooms and new lighting. The renovation of the field is expected to cost about $3 million. The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation is raising money to create the accessible park between Los Angeles and Palo Alto.
“We want, we need an all-abilities playground in Santa Barbara,” said Jill Zachary, director of Parks & Recreation. “We really evaluated all the parks and came back to this park because it is accessible, there’s parking, it’s large and it can serve all sorts of users.”
About 50 people gathered near the current playground at Dwight Murphy Field, across the street from the Santa Barbara Zoo.
“It’s a park desperately in need of reinvestment,” Zachary said. “I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.”
The park was built in the 1920s. The playgrounds were built in the 2000s.
The soccer field would include a synthetic field, which would allow it to be used year-round.
“Right now, we have to close this field four times a year, for up to four weeks at a time, in order to rehab the field,” Zachary said.
Santa Barbara has a shortage of playing fields, and the Parks & Recreation Department has been on a mission to enhance and renovate parks under Zachary’s tenure.
Zachary said the project could get conceptual approval next month, which would lead to design and construction, then possible completion by 2023.
Gwendolyn Strong was born with a disease called spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, and her parents, Bill and Victoria Strong, started a foundation after she was born to reach out to other families of children with SMA and help fund research for a cure. Gwendolyn died at age 7.
One in every 40 people carry the gene, and the group has been working to raise awareness about prenatal genetic screening.
Noozhawk first wrote about Gwendolyn and the Strong family in 2008, when Gwendolyn was just 10 months old and Bill and Victoria had begun gathering signatures for congressional action for funding for SMA research.
The new playground calls for a variety of accessible features.
Victoria Strong said at the meeting that Gwendolyn was very “whimsical” and loved fairy tales, and the park reflects much of Gwendolyn’s interests.
“She had this incredible ability to bring people together,” Victoria Strong said. “Wherever she went, people gravitated toward her.”
She said she had very limited exposure to people with disabilities before Gwendolyn.
“She really showed me a beautiful relationship, and how so many of us are missing out because they don’t have real life experience with people with disabilities,” Victoria Strong said. “The end result of this is going to be phenomenal for our entire community. It’s going to be a tourist attraction to help all the hotels.”
Several people who knew Gwendolyn attended the meeting.
“It’s really important to include a space that is inclusive of everybody,” said Kara Bollinger, a special education teacher who worked with Gwendolyn. “Everyone can come here. It’s not just for people with disabilities. Creating more spaces where there are more opportunities is just important.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
