College Park

In these reviews, I like to start with a panoramic photo of the place. This is partly because I think it’s useful to readers who want an overall sense of the playground, and partly because when I started doing reviews, the “pano” feature was new and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Some playgrounds are so huge that I can’t capture the extent of them even with a panoramic shot. (Earl Bales is a good example.) College Park doesn’t have that problem.

With a footprint probably about as small as the square footage of the condos that surround it, the playground at College Park is an afterthought. It’s as if the developers knew that no families would be moving in anyway (or at least, no families with kids over age 3) and so they used the budget on public art and landscaping instead.

Having said that, it’s not a terrible park as downtown parks go. It’s nice to have a big open space, away from the busy streets (Yonge and Bay) that border it. The Barbara Ann Scott skate trail brings visitors in winter, and in summer a fountain guarded by huge bronze frogs attracts curious toddlers who think the fountain is a splash pad until they get yanked back by their parents.

The equipment is limited to a line of bug-and-critter-themed Little Tikes spring-loaded riders. The Little Tikes website reveals that each one has its own adorable name: Gallagher the Grasshopper, Lola the Snail, Nectar the Bee, Scarlet the Ladybug. The only other element is a tiny rope climber which – in context with the critters – looks like a spider web.

In a perfect world they would have taken the critter theme and really run with it, creating a downtown playground that would become legendary among condo kids. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, we don’t live in a perfect world.