Hop the Fence at Austin’s New Alliance Children’s Garden — Virtually, That Is

The sign at the Alliance Children’s Garden’s main entrance. We’re peeking through the fence here. Photo by James Rambin

Here’s a sad little song for you — the Alliance Children’s Garden, a high-concept playground project on more than two acres at Butler Metro Park that broke ground early last year, is finished. It’s actually been done for six months, but if you’ve got a pulse you know how we’ve spent those last six months and more — so, in keeping with the city’s pandemic-related social distancing guidelines, the shiny new playground’s construction fences remain standing to deflect any curious kids, depressing as that is.

But after all these months, don’t you want to see what’s inside? It’s not like you can’t go down there and look through the fence, but it’s not quite the same — and though we’re personally huge fans of trespassing, in the spirit of the collective effort to eradicate the coronavirus plus the whole legality issue we think it’s best to stay outside the fence. Still, it’s fine to stick a camera through the fence, so we did:

Giant ants! I guess you can ride them. Photo by James Rambin

Built-in ping pong tables keep the adults busy while the kids are skinning their knees and whatnot. Photo by James Rambin

An extremely large climbing structure inside the garden, which leads me to ask why playgrounds weren’t this good when I was six or seven years old and could walk off really serious falls. Photo by James Rambin

It’s a start, but these three photos don’t give us a very good impression of the space. The project’s landscape architects at local firm TBG Partners conducted a virtual tour of the space late last month, but that doesn’t do us any good now — except it turns out a few other people have posted sneak peeks from inside the park over the summer. We’ve scoured social media for as many photos and videos as we can find from inside the playground — consider this your virtual tour of the Alliance Children’s Garden, a long-awaited space keeping us waiting just a little longer. First, here’s a video from an enterprising fella who flew his drone over the fence to give us a look:

Next up is a slideshow of images from inside the park by construction firm SpawGlass, which worked on the project — this one gives us a closer look at some of the park’s finer details, including those giant ants we saw earlier:

Our last video arrives from local concrete firm Sundek and its sales manager Scott Hubbard, providing a more technical look at the project’s decorative concrete elements including a climbing wall and “cheese wall” full of kid-sized holes:

Once you’ve caught up on these videos, compare what you’ve seen to the drawings of the proposed playground we saw back in 2018 — it appears the finished product actually does these concept renderings justice, with elements like the cheese wall, giant ants, and climbing structure losing surprisingly little in translation:

Images: TBG Partners

We’re fans of any downtown-adjacent project acknowledging the urban lives of kids in its design — we just hope the playground opens soon enough that the young people currently enduring this pandemic’s uniquely damaging social effects can enjoy it. No matter how long it takes, the Parks and Recreation Department explains the park is designed for “multigenerational play” providing recreation for all ages — all the more reason to get through this virus and bring those fences down for good.

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