ROTARY INTERNATIONAL PLAYGROUND GRAND RAPIDS CLUB CELEBRATES CENTENNIAL WITH CONTRIBUTION TO MILLENIUM PARK The Grand Rapids Rotary Club is marking Rotary International’s Centennial anniversary by donating a major addition to Kent County’s Millennium Park. In keeping with the club’s dedication to community service and promoting world understanding, the Rotary International Playground will feature scaled down replicas of landmarks from around the world. The interactive, educational playground, geared to children ages 3 to 12, will celebrate cultural diversity and be located in a section called Kid’s Town at the east end of Millennium Park. It will be built in phases, with ground breaking and significant construction planned for 2005, Rotary International’s Centennial year. The $2 million internationally themed playground will be handicap accessible and feature a jungle-like maze, pretend Mayan ruins, the Great Wall of China, Moai statues of Easter Island, a Prairie/Tundra area complete with gopher holes for kids to pop out of, a Mountain Range for climbing, swinging and hanging, and an Oceania play area including a scale model of the globe. “This is a community wide project,” said Lody Zwarensteyn, Alliance for Health president and past-president of the Rotary Club of Grand Rapids. “We’re partnering with other Rotary clubs to create a Rotary legacy. It’s going to be a very powerful thing for the community.” Millennium Park is a unique, ambitious project whose goal is to return approximately 1,500 acres of land, primarily used for industrial purposes in the recent past, to publicly owned, urban green space and develop it into a park where families can bring their children and friends for swimming, biking, walking or picnicking. Construction began in late 2002, and the park is expected to be complete in 2014. At that time it will connect the four cities of Grand Rapids, Walker, Wyoming and Grandville. The park will be twice as large as New York’s Central Park, making it one of the nation’s largest parks in an urban setting. The Rotary Club of Grand Rapids is honored to contribute to the project and hopes that Millennium Park and the Rotary International Playground will provide many generations to come with family-oriented recreation.