Premium Playground

Once a trashed-out, weed-choked homeless encampment, Santa Barbara’s new oceanfront park has gone from rags to riches.

This 10-acre sliver along Cabrillo Boulevard has designer touches you won’t see anywhere else: huge whale sculptures that spout a fine mist, a play structure modeled after a famous local shipwreck and water-controlled “creeklets” where small children can splash.

Even the benches that surround a grassy plaza are made of teak.

But the centerpiece in the park--an extension of Chase Palm Park--is an antique carousel. Dating to about 1920, its 32 hand-carved wooden horses have been meticulously restored in glistening colors.

The ornate horses glide round and round in the carousel’s own stately eight-sided white building with roll-up doors. For $1.50, kids young and old can mount these beauties and ride for five minutes.

“It’s very popular--much more than we thought,” said John Pattenaude, who operates and maintains it. His oldest takers so far are two men, ages 98 and 97, who remembered riding a carousel together as boys on Coney Island.

As elegant as it is, the carousel isn’t the one that ultimately will reside in the park. That one--larger, even more ornate and dated circa 1916--is due to arrive next spring after restoration.

The antique merry-go-rounds are owned by Historic Carousels in Hood River, Ore., a family business that buys, restores and operates them all over the U.S.

“They are our babies,” said owner Carol Perron. And if the carousel now going round and round in Santa Barbara can be compared to a Buick, the one arriving next year is a Mercedes.

“The carving just blows me away,” Perron said. “It’s extremely fancy, unlike any I’ve ever worked on, and I’ve painted about 300 horses.” (Three of the restored horses, with their fancy gear, are on display nearby at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort.)

For each horse, it’s taking Perron and her son about 1 1/2 weeks to strip, sand, paint and apply up to 10 coats of a clear protective sealer. On many of the horses, they’re leaving unfinished spots to make it clear that these horses are made of wood, and “not something cranked out with forms,” she said. The carousel was manufactured by Allan Herschell, a Scot who settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and ultimately only made a handful of the labor-intensive gems, beginning in 1884.

In Perron’s view, they are pure art. In fact, at the time they appeared around the turn of the century, carousels were designed as an adult amusement, she said. “They were not a kids’ ride.” And they were mainly in parks. “That’s why it’s a thrill for us to put one in a park. It’s like it was meant to be.”

The carousel is but one touch of class in this lushly landscaped park that took eight years and $7 million to design and build. It’s part of a complicated development linked to Parker’s Doubletree Resort and his plans for an adjacent hotel. Community workshops gave the public a chance to say what it wanted for the park.

What it got was a little of everything--all designed to the hilt.

At the Garden Street entrance on the west side is a grassy, terraced plaza with a Mediterranean fountain. Another fountain graces the east entrance along Calle Cesar Chavez. This one is designed with compass points telling visitors that three miles directly west is the Santa Barbara Lighthouse and 5,667 miles farther is Hiroshima, Japan.

The graceful pillars at either end of the park look like carved sandstone, but they’re not.

“Most of the rock on the property is artificial,” said Dave Davis, the city’s director of community development. “It’s more durable.”

A footbridge separates a man-made lagoon--complete with two families of mallards--from cobblestone “creeklets” where small children can splash and wade in sandy water no deeper than their ankles.

“All the kids are using it,” Davis said. “We almost deleted the creeklets, but it turns out it’s one of the places little kids flock to.”

The shipwreck playground, designed for children 5 to 12, is modeled after the Winfield Scott, a side paddle-wheel steamer that rammed Anacapa Island on Dec. 2, 1853. The ship’s sinking bow forms a slide, and kids can scamper around on bridges and netting.

The playground also has a lighthouse designed with refractive lighting. Kids can explore a little stucco play village with caves and bluffs.

At a snack bar nearby, visitors can choose all the usual stuff--soda, cotton candy, cookies, hot dogs, even turkey dogs.

BE THERE

Chase Palm Park expansion, off Cabrillo Boulevard between Garden Street and Calle Cesar Chavez, Santa Barbara, is open from sunrise to 10 p.m. Parking is available near the Garden Street entrance. (805) 564-5418.