A well-used and much-loved Port Angeles playground funded by the community and built with thousands of hours of volunteer labor and thousands of dollars of donated materials is now a crime scene.

The Generation II Dream Playground at Erickson Playfield, at 302 S. Race St., was reduced to charred remains after an early morning fire on Dec. 20 that is being investigated as an arson.

Sgt. Clay Rife with the Port Angeles Police Department said a juvenile male was taken into custody. Rife declined to identify him or provide his age because the individual is a minor.

The fire at Erickson Playfield at Third and Race streets was fully involved when first responders arrived after a passerby called in a report at about 3:44 a.m. on Dec. 20, Rife said. The fire was under control by 4 a.m. and extinguished by 4:15 a.m., according to a city press release.

“There were flames possibly as high as the trees,” Rife said. “The park is almost completely destroyed.”

The ferocity of the blaze led to sagging of the composite-material fence surrounding the play area. A nearby overhead light, as well as parts of an adjacent swing set, were melted from the intense heat, and much of the artificial play surface was charred and blackened.

Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group / Port Angeles Dream Playground board member Steve Hargis, left, and board president Steve Methner confer outside the fence of Erickson Playfield after the playground went up in flames in the early morning hours of Dec. 20.

The smell of burned materials permeated the park and the sidewalk along Race Street.

Steve Methner, Dream Playground Foundation president, said the zipline and a piece of climbing equipment may be salvageable.

Erickson Playfield has been secured as a crime scene, said Port Angeles Police Chief Brian Smith.

The Port Angeles fire and police departments are conducting the investigation, with assistance from Clallam County Fire District 3 and the Washington State Patrol, the press release said.

“Until then, and until after the area has been cleaned and made safe to visit, Erickson Playfield remains closed,” city personnel said in the release. “Your support and cooperation are greatly appreciated during this time.”

Lee Ancin, co-founder and an owner of Play By Design, said the Dream Playground equipment was constructed out of structural plastic, recycled plastic and powder-coated metal. Setting it on fire would almost certainly require an accelerant, he said.

In his 30 years in the business, Ancin said all of the playgrounds he had seen burned down had been intentionally targeted.

“What’s heartbreaking is how this project was created,” Ancin said. “It was an awesome community event and such a powerful group.

“If anyone’s going to rally around a tragedy like this and rebuild something and make it another historic event, that’s the group.”

Numerous members of the Dream Playground Foundation — who oversaw fundraising, planning and construction of the playground — gathered along Race Street outside Erickson as daylight spread across Port Angeles and the extent of the damage became evident.

Dream Playground Foundation board members and community members decorated the fence with flowers and the word Hope.

The Dream Playground, originally built by volunteers and opened in 2002, was rebuilt in 2021 as Generation II Dream Playground.

City officials purchased nearly $118,000 worth of playground equipment for the new and improved playground, which sported a larger central tree house, wheelchair-accessible swings, climbing features, spinners and a zipline.

Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group / A melted infant swing hangs near a fire hose at the site of the burned Dream Playground at Erickson Playfield on Dec. 20. Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group / Peggy DeYoung, front, and Colleen Pedersen, both of Port Angeles, place flowers on the perimeter fence of Erickson Playfield near the Dream Playground on Dec. 20.

The original playground’s construction was one of the largest volunteer efforts in Clallam County history. It included more than 2,000 volunteers using tools and equipment loaned by the community. More $185,000 was raised to pay for the construction, with most of the funds coming from local businesses and thousands of individual contributors.

Led by Methner, volunteers, donors and local corporate sponsors came together again in 2021 to replace the then-aging wooden structure and wood chip ground covering.

Erickson Playfield received the 2023 Spotlight Award for Facilities (population under 100,000) from the Washington Recreation and Parks Association because of its outstanding achievement in outdoor areas that have a recreational use component.

Mayor Kate Dexter said, “Today weighs heavy on the hearts of many in Port Angeles, particularly those who helped to build the Dream Playground and the families whose children love to play there.

Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group / Jo Johnston, left, and Leia Kenton spell out a message of hope on the fence of Erickson Playfield after the Dream Playground was burned on Dec. 20 in Port Angeles.

“The Dream Playground is not only an amazing community gathering place, it is also a tangible example of all that is good in Port Angeles,” she said.

“I want to thank PA Fire and Clallam Fire District #2 for their response.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Port Angeles City Council member Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, who crafted handles for the playground’s jungle gym.

“There was extensive community investment in that park. We’ll just have to come together and make a plan,” he said.

Peninsula Daily News staff Reporter Paula Hunt, Photojournalist Keith Thorpe and Executive Editor Leah Leach contributed to this story.

Many ready to help rebuild community icon

The amount of insurance proceeds that will be paid for Dream Playground II, which was destroyed in an early morning fire Wednesday, and how people can donate to the park’s replacement are issues that were being worked out, said Corey Delikat, Port Angeles Parks and Recreation director, on Dec. 20.

The city has its human resources department looking into the insurance coverage and talking with the city’s insurance company, Washington City Insurance Authority, Delikat said.

“They are going through that, so we won’t know for a while. We’re still dealing with the sadness and a little bit of anger, but we’ll start this week doing that,” he said, adding he didn’t have a timeline for any of it.

Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group / Police and fire investigators pour through the rubble of the Dream Playground after it was destroyed by fire in the the early hours on Dec. 20.

“We won’t know until after the inspections, but it probably will be a complete rebuild. Maybe the zipline and one piece of climbing equipment can be salvaged,” Delikat said.

The Dream Playground Foundation will be putting out messaging pretty soon, he said, adding it will be easier to funnel the money through the foundation rather than the city.

“The next steps are looking at fundraising and grants. We have asked for help from the team from the previous project. It’s just evaluating things and figuring out the next steps,” Delikat said.

“We need to keep our chins up and get through this. The community wants to help a lot. This was a community project. It’s their heart and soul. There’s people who played on it as a kid, and now their kids played on it,” he said.

Steve Methner, president of the Dream Playground Foundation, said last week no fundraising events are planned yet, but the group would try keeping social media and its website up to date with the latest developments.

File photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group / Children and parents roam through the Generation II Dream Playground at Erickson Playfield in Port Angeles on its dedication day in September 2021.

“Now what? We take a deep breath and work through the grief and sadness in seeing this labor of love destroyed,” Methner said. “Then we put on our hardhats and pick up our shovels and figure out how to make bigger and better than before.

“It’s too soon to have a lot of feelings about it, to be honest,” Methner added. “My first inclination was to scream and kick the fence, but we just don’t know what happened here yet.”

“We already have people here talking about how we’re going to put it back together and how important it is to kids in the community, so that’s what we’re going to do,” Methner said.

The blaze is devastating, he said, but volunteers are ready to move forward.

“The whole foundation showed up already, so we already have a great team of people who care a lot,” Methner said.

The foundation raised $675,000 for Dream Playground II, almost all of which went to construction costs, Methner said.

He didn’t know how hours were donated by up to 400 volunteers on the project, but it was many thousands, he said.

“The play surface had to be installed by a professional contractor, but the rest was done by volunteers,” Methner said. “Definitely the value of the volunteer hours is going to be a pretty staggering number.”

A volunteer hour was considered to be worth $34.87 in 2021, according to Independent Sector, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., and that is the primary source for state and national data on the value of volunteer time.

The project to replace the original Dream Playground, which was built in September 2002 but razed in March 2021 amid safety and maintenance concerns, started in July 2021 and lasted six days before a historic “heat dome” made conditions impossible for many volunteers to continue, Methner said, so it was completed in August.