Last September, Lindsey Garden’s playground, in the historic Avenues, lost the city’s last merry-go-round, a piece of beloved equipment that had been in use in the park for over 50 years. Partially out of a sense of nostalgia, partially out of a frustration with our overly safety conscious society (the city claims the merry-go-round was too dangerous), encouraged by her own daughter’s disbelief that her favorite piece of the local playground had been removed, Avenues resident Phoenix Ostermann started a petition to get the play piece back.
Initially, local media picked up on the story and supporters generously donated to a fund to bring the merry-go-round back (the city said that it needed to have a costly retrofit to make the equipment more child-safe) but the project slowly lost momentum. Now Ostermann is hoping that the grand opening of the new Lindsey Garden’s playground, planned for this month, will give her cause some new life.
“We are going to participate in the grand reopening and do a booth or a lemonade stand and take advantage of the crowd,” says Ostermann. “That’s when I hope we can pick the campaign back up.”