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After providing a stomping ground to generations of children for more than three decades, the dilapidated planks and worn-smooth railings of the 30-year-old Bear Creek Park playground will be demolished Monday morning to make way for its much-anticipated successor. Originally constructed in 1987 following an extensive fundraising campaign and construction effort involving hundreds of volunteers, the city spent much of the past year repeating the process with help from the original designers, Leathers & Associates, who returned to the Rogue Valley for input from Roosevelt and Hoover students who contributed to the new design. This past Saturday, Medford Rotary sponsored a “free slip-and-slide” event, a final farewell of sorts to the 9,500-square-foot. Al Densmore, a former Medford mayor and state legislator whose firm, JWA, has helped facilitate the playground’s replacement, said the $600,000-plus project has been a tall feat financially, organizationally and emotionally for locals. Densmore remembers the portions of the original structure he helped build. “I was there last weekend as we set up the slip-and-slide event, and that was the last sort of big hurrah for the old playground before we take it down. It really is emotional to see something come down when you were there when it was built. “I guess I’ve come full circle. I can remember the Leathers people arriving the night before. Their plane was late, so we were out there with flashlights staking the ground in the middle of the night,” Densmore said. “It was amazing, over the course of four days, to watch this beautiful new playground emerge. Thirty years later, it’s about to come down, and we’re doing it again, making it bigger and a little bit different. Fifty days from now is when it will all happen.” After demolition and site work, which will extend the play structure eastward toward the small parking lot off Siskiyou Boulevard, crews will arrive Sept. 29 to help manage volunteers and prepare to assemble the new structure Oct. 2-6. Medford City Council voted in April to name the new structure the Olsrud Family Community Playground in tribute to Sherm and Wanda Olsrud, who lived across the street from the park for decades. Park neighbor Hindey Moser reminisced this week about the three decades of activity at the busy playground and park. Moser said everything from Easter egg hunts and fundraising events to Scout events, movies and concerts had endeared the playground to the community. Moser volunteered to help with the original project along with husband, Preston, and daughter, Jenny. “When it was being built, I was helping with child care over at Hoover School — all the people who were helping could have their kids watched at Hoover — and Preston was involved over at the playground. We brought some hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches, because people were asked to bring tools for the volunteers to use. We still have some tools that have our last name on them because we wrote on them to be able to get them back,” Moser said. Following playground construction, the couple went house shopping and their daughter requested a backyard play area “just like Bear Creek Park. “When we were looking for a house, having Bear Creek Park across the street was a huge incentive. When we first brought Jenny to see the house, we parked on the side street and took her out the front door. We said, ‘Sorry we couldn’t get a backyard like Bear Creek Park, but is it OK to have it as kind of a front yard?’” Years later, Moser’s daughter held her engagement dinner at the park. Moser was pleased to see a similar process done for the replacement structure and hoped for local families to get involved once more. “It was an incredible community effort,” Moser said. “The playground and park have been really important to the community.” Densmore said the city will need hundreds of volunteers for everything from child care and manual labor to special trade skills. Refreshments and loaner tools would also be a big help as city crews and project facilitators attempt to keep costs as low as possible. For details or to sign up to help, see www.ci.medford.or.us/Page.asp?NavID=4241 or visit the Santo Community Center, 701 N. Columbus Ave., Medford. Reach freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected].