Every playground tells you something about the community that built it — the equipment it chooses, the children it imagines climbing on the bars, the families it pictures nearby. For Shannon Eason, Assistant Park Superintendent for the Michigan City Parks and Recreation Department, accessibility sits at the center of that conversation.
The project in front of her is ambitious: a new all-inclusive playground and fitness park at Fetters Alley, set inside Washington Park — the stretch of green space along Lake Michigan that locals proudly call the city’s jewel on the lake. Thanks to a major grant from a local data center developer, that vision is now within reach.
“It was very important that the data center contributed largely to this project to something that serves everyone: our residents, our visitors,” Shannon says. “Their large donation helped us get very close to the end of our fundraising goal.”
The vision for the playground began with hands-on research. Shannon and her team studied accessibility and visited dozens of other playgrounds.
“When we started doing playground research, I saw a lot of gaps,” she recalls. “Children and adults that weren’t being served, children with mobility issues, vision impairments, hearing impairments, autism spectrum.”
Behind that word — gaps — are real families. Parents who have driven past playground after playground looking for one their child could actually use. Grandparents who watch from a bench because the equipment wasn’t built with them in mind. Siblings who have learned to explain why some kids get to play and others just watch. Shannon didn’t want Michigan City’s next playground to add another entry to that list. She wanted it to be the answer.
The vision, she explained, was to “build a destination playground to draw people in from the region.” A destination that would welcome the children other playgrounds had left out. Mobility-friendly surfaces. Sensory-conscious design. Equipment thoughtful enough to serve everyone.
But visions like this one don’t build themselves. Inclusive playground equipment costs meaningfully more than the standard fare. That’s what made the data center’s contribution so pivotal.
Data centers showed “that commitment to us early on,” Shannon reflects, “just a good faith effort that shows our residents that they’re going to be a good neighbor.”
Soon, on a stretch of ground overlooking Lake Michigan, children who have spent too many afternoons watching from the sidelines will finally have a place built with them in mind. And Michigan City will have a new landmark on its shoreline — one made possible because a data center chose to invest in the community from day one.