$93K city-themed playground at TAES soon ready for traffic
By Per Peterson
In a few weeks, a quiet suburb behind the Tracy Area Elementary School building will be a hub of activity for hundreds of kids.
Nearly two dozen volunteers spent Saturday and/or Sunday constructing the new city-themed playground at the school. The new playground sits adjacent to the equipment installed 10 years ago.
“It’s super exciting,” Missie Erbes said Saturday as posts were put in place and hardware was fastened to any number of playground items by volunteers. “I am ecstatic that we’ve made it this far.”
Erbes is president of the Tracy Parent-Teacher Club, a group that has been raising funds for years. The group got a major boost a few weeks ago when US Bank and the Minnesota Vikings matched the $37,000 the PTC had raised.
“It’s been a long journey — a journey that began seven years ago for myself,” Erbes said. “We’ve had a few phases to get to this point, but this was always the dream. We couldn’t have done it without everyone’s hard work, fundraising and the grant from US Bank and the Minnesota Vikings. That was our big hurdle.”
The playground includes some interactive aspects for the students and is meant to represent a city, as it includes a fire hall, gas station, bank and a “corner store.”
“Now they’ll be able to go to the city and pretend to be a fireman, or a policeman, or go work at the bank,” Erbes said. “There’s interactive panels through the whole things. They can use imaginary play far beyond what they could even dream of using.”
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.