Children of the Long Beach City College community will soon get a new playground, funded by $1.5 million in federal dollars.
In a press conference on Friday, Congressman Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, joined LBCC leaders to announce that the funding will be used to purchase and install new play structures and outdoor equipment on the Trades, Technology, and Community Learning Campus on Pacific Coast Highway. The playground will be installed in 2027 and designed for children ages 3 to 5 who attend pre-school at LBCC.
“A safe and engaging playground is essential to healthy child development,” said Uduak-Joe Ntuk, LBCC board of trustees president. The new playground also represents an investment in the LBCC students, employees and community members who rely on childcare on campus, Ntuk said.
About a quarter of LBCC students in 2023 were parents. For those families, it can be hard to access outdoor play for kids while balancing work, school and the difficulty of living in neighborhoods without nearby parks, Superintendent-President Mike Muñoz said. These upgrades will provide kids with access to safe, supervised outdoor space while their parents can work and learn at the college, Muñoz said — part of LBCC’s ongoing effort to reduce barriers to education for student-parents.
LBCC’s forthcoming playground is the latest in more than a dozen that Garcia has helped revamp in Long Beach. “I’ve been on a mission since I was mayor to replace every single tot lot,” he said in an interview.
And LBCC’s outdoor play area is due for improvements. The current climbing play structure was built for the college two decades ago, said Stacey Smith-Clark, manager of the child development center. The structure has one slide and a too-short climbing wall — “they take two steps and they’re up,” Smith-Clark said of the children.
She envisions a structure that allows kids to develop their gross motor skills by “jumping and climbing and swinging” on new equipment, she said. Already, outdoor play is a big part of the education at the child development center, where children spend at least three hours outside: “We really believe in Southern California that children should be outdoors most of the time, in this fresh air,” Smith-Clark said, adding that the kids are looking forward to equipment that is bigger and more challenging.