Mural to adorn downtown pocket playground for kids

Sometimes it takes a small village to build and decorate a play area for kids.

Last year several people led by development official Jolene Bach and architect Tim Peterson rallied efforts to replace a small fenced playground off a downtown alley for use by low- and moderate-income children living in the Elmore Roberts Apartment building at 6 6th St. S.

"We realized there was no good place for those kids to play, because the existing playground was rundown and there was glass and sharp metal laying around," said Bach, who had her first child early this year. "We wanted to provide them a safe place to play."

This year, they and others are pushing forward to improve the surrounding area, including painting a vibrantly colored and energetic mural of kids playing on the side wall of a building across a parking lot from the park.

The Center for Mental Health jumped on board, with CEO Sydney Blair agreeing to have a mural painted on the half-block-long side of its Wellness Recovery Center building at 513 1st Ave. S. The Center for Mental Health also helped provide the paint for the mural, with a matching grant from the Business Improvement District.

Independent licensed professional counselor Dana Del Guerra spent hours designing the mural, which shows a variety of children frolicking, and donated her painting time.

Del Guerra said she uses painting to help in the therapy with some of her clients, but this is by far the biggest project she's taken on. She has painted between patient appointments, starting early before the sun gets hot and skipping rainy days. She recruited high school art students to help with the big project, which features kids of all races frolicking, playing football and tag and doing yoga stretches.

Downtown Improvement District coordinator Joan Redeen, who's had some experience with murals, is coordinating the project, which is expected to be done by mid to late June. She recruited Hotsy Wy-Mont to donate its power washing services to smooth the building's side and McGurran Precision Painting to donate the blue prime coat.

The original plan design by L'Heureux Page Werner architects called for painting murals on all the buildings with sides facing the small park, Redeen and Bach said, so there's more work to come, including a possible basketball hoop.

This year's plans also call for replacing the playground's fence and adding landscaping, with assistance from Paradise Fencing and Forde Nursery, and adding benches, Bach said.

Bach, a Great Falls Development vice president, said she and Peterson came up with the idea of improving the playground and surrounding area last year during a downtown master plan discussion, and brought in Redeen, architects Ryan Smith and Dani Grebe and Roberts apartment manager Teresa Stevens as steering team members.

Roberts apartments owner Gene Burger made a major contribution, supplemented by an Alive@5 fundraiser and corporate and individual contributions to raise $20,000 for a brightly colored playground apparatus of two slides, a soft wood chip floor, and some landscaping last year.

"This project is a good example of neighbors helping neighbors," Bach said.

More money will be raised by another Alive@5 performance in early August at which the 49thy Street Blues, a Great Falls favorite, will perform.