Reiche Playground Renovation

The Reiche Playground is a community playground managed by Portland’s Parks, Recreation and Facilities (PRF) Department. It is among Portland's most heavily used playgrounds and is an important multi-functional recreation space year-round. The playground mainly serves children ranging from 2-12 years old, both from the Reiche Community School during school hours and from the Reiche Community Center and surrounding neighborhood throughout the day and especially outside school hours. Much of the existing play equipment dates back to 2003 when it was originally installed. Since then, many parts have been repaired, replaced or removed entirely.

In spring 2023, the Reiche School PTO organized and sponsored two charrettes to raise community and school staff awareness of nature-based playground design, highlight the planned playground redesign effort and empower community members to contribute more actively during the redesign process.

In June 2023, the City hired Sashie Misner Landscape Architecture to lead the design of the new playground.

On July 20th, 2023, PRF held a community meeting at King Middle School to kick-off the design process and solicit design input from community members. Input gathered through the PTO charrettes, from online surveys and from the July community meeting informed the landscape architect's design work.

On October, 12th, 2023, PRF held a second community meeting to share three draft concept designs with community members and school staff. Meeting participants shared feedback on sticky notes and through large group discussion. Additional community input on the design concepts was solicited through an online survey. All of this feedback was used to identify the best aspects of each concept and incorporate them into the final playground design.

Over the course of 2024 and 2025, the playground design was refined, translated into construction documents, underwent permitting review and put out to bid for construction.

Construction of the new playground is taking place summer of late June through mid-September 2026.

Want to follow along with the construction progress this summer? Sign up for the PRF newsletter here.