(Additional photograph below.)
A vegetable garden for kids, sandbox, slide, picnic table and benches are all possible additions to Zins Playground, a small park on the corner of Katsaros Drive and Groveland Street near Haverhill’s Holy Family Hospital.
The playground was “removed and not replaced back when the hospital was built,” said Board of Health Chairperson Peter Carbone, who is leading the initiative to enhance the space, which currently holds a bench, small monument and trees. The hospital moved to its current location on Lincoln Avenue in 1984, displacing the then-much larger park.
Deborah Zins Henegan, granddaughter of the park’s namesake Charles E. “Jack” Zins, said as a child she would play at the public swimming pool, ballpark and basketball courts, where the hospital’s parking lot now stands. It was packed during the summer, she said, and high schoolers put on a weekly craft day.
“A lot of us kids were just sent out with bathing suits, and brown paper bag lunches and we would just walk up to the playground for the day, and that’s just how we spent those days in the summer.”
She said Zins, who worked at the Haverhill Gazette’s printing press, went door to door gathering money for the playground. Belonging to the local Lodge of Elks, she said he passed his civic-mindedness down to her father. “We used to have to do a lot of things for other people. That’s just how we were raised.”
In addition to $40,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant money earmarked by the city, Carbone has so far raised $15,000—$5,000 each from Pentucket Kiwanis, Haverhill Kiwanis and Pentucket Bank charitable foundation. He said it “concerned” him that Lincoln Avenue cuts some kids off from the much larger Riverside Park.
“It’s a busy street and that little neighborhood up in the Groveland Street area deserves a small playground for themselves,” he said.
Community Development Division Director Andrew K. Herlihy told those gathered some additional trees, taken from a different city spending item, could also be planted.
At a public meeting on Monday, Henegan said a girl—who she remembers as a nine-year-old at William H. Moody School—recommended the play equipment. City Councilor Melissa J. Lewandowski, who represents ward four, and Mayor Melinda E. Barrett put on the meeting to solicit public feedback.
Tim Coco contributed to this story.
Mayor Melinda E. Barrett, City Councilor Melinda J. Lewandowski and other city officials meet with residents to discuss improvements at Zins Playground. (Courtesy photograph.)