Giving Back In Our Community

Initiative transforms residential street into children's play area.  

Alex Ladouceur is the goaltender as Rowan Lockwood and William Harris run for the ball during the Play Street closing of Cheryl Place in Kingston on Tuesday. 

On a cool early Tuesday evening on Cheryl Place in Greenwood Park in Kingston’s east end, children can be seen playing road hockey, riding around on their bicycles and skateboarding unsupervised, without the fear of cars roaring past them or strangers roaming through the neighbourhood.  That’s because the closed-off street is part of the Levelling the Playing Fields project organized by the Kingston Coalition for Active Transportation and Kingston Gets Active.  Every Tuesday from 6-7 p.m. and Saturday from 1-3 p.m., Cheryl Place, a cul-de-sac, is closed to traffic from McCallum Street and turned into a large play area. During the Play Street times, only residents of the street are allowed to use their vehicles on the street and must travel at the speed of pedestrians.  

The initiative is being evaluated by researchers from the department of geography and planning at Queen’s University, according to the initiative’s website. The fundamental goal of the project is to pilot two types of street-based interventions, School Streets and Play Streets, in Kingston neighbourhoods.  School Streets involves Sir Winston Churchill Public School on Earl Street and currently closes MacDonnell Street between Earl and Union streets, and a portion of Hill Street between Napier and MacDonnell streets, for 30 to 60 minutes before and after the school day. Vehicles are not permitted to enter the street during these times unless they have an exemption.  

The Play Street project started last fall but was shut down over the winter due to various COVID-19 spikes in Kingston. Kingston city council had voted in favour of the pilot program for both initiatives in the summer of 2021.  Jeffrey Oke, a resident of Cheryl Place, and Hayley Kombargi of BGC South East are working together on Cheryl Place.  “I reached out to some of the other neighbours on the street, and they all agreed that it would be a good initiative,” Oke said. “Of course, there’s always people opposing, but we had enough interest from the majority of the group to go  ahead as a tryout to see how it can work out, and overall it’s been pretty good.”  Oke said Tuesday evenings seem to be the best day of the week to hold the event.  “On Tuesdays, people don’t have much going on, but when the weekend comes, people have plans,” he said.  Cheryl Place is a street with a mix of young families and others living in medium-size single-family homes. 

The initiatives brings out the children and adults, giving them an opportunity to socialize.  “It’s usually just the kids on the street and sometimes their friends. The initiative was so the kids could play outside their home and have a little bit less risk associated with it,” Oke said.  “My kids know at this time their friends are going to come on the street and play.”  Oke has two children: Imogen, 8, and Sullivan, 6.  “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s been really nice for the kids to get out,” Oke said. “Knowing that there’s less traffic and people are aware this is going to occur at the same time, it’s worked out well.  “The most challenging part is making sure there are adults available just to have that third eye on what’s going on, but recently there have been high school students willing to volunteer, which has been a nice thing, so we can at least manage the scratches on the knees, the boo-boos and encouraging the kids to continue to play independently and foster that type of imagination play instead of (parents) having control of exactly what they need to do.”