Fire at PlayBuild

 

In the early morning hours of March 14th, a fire broke out in the office of our Thalia Street play space in Central City. Fortunately no one was on site at the time. Our Thalia Street neighbors phoned 911 and our long-standing volunteer and community manager Joanika Davis rushed to the scene from her home in St. Thomas. Thanks to our proximity to the NO Fire Department station at MLK and Rampart, firefighters quickly arrived at the scene and were able to contain the blaze.

 

Sadly our outdoor classroom space was badly damaged, and our front office was completely destroyed. Luckily our organizational records are all stored off-site, but we lost our entire collection of tabletop building toys, many of which we had accumulated through the gracious donations of friends and manufacturers over the last nine years. Our art supplies, kids’ book collection, and creative play materials were all lost.

 

Thankfully our large-scale toys and Imagination Station mobile cart were spared.

 

In the near-term we need your help. We are asking our community to donate now to help us hire some help and to give us time to regroup and map out an intentional and participatory recovery plan in partnership with our neighbors.

 

The last few days have been a blur of fire department investigations and inspections. Joined by PlayBuild co-founder Charlotte Jones and neighbor Johnny Hatcher, Joanika removed garbage and boarded up the site with plywood from Home Depot. It will take a few weeks to assess the full scale of damage to the building, and we need to quickly mobilize some project and volunteer management resources.

 

As you all know PlayBuild is a labor of love with an all-volunteer staff and no full-time employees. 2022 marks our 10-year anniversary, and we have been slowly emerging from the pandemic while optimistically planning the future, including recruiting new Board members and planning a major fundraising campaign to enable our search for a full-time Executive Director.

 

Thank you in advance for supporting our emergency fundraising efforts. We could not be more grateful for your support.