A colorful climbing wall filled with windows and cubbyholes for hide-and-seek. A sensory garden with plants that have leaves of smooth and rough textures. Grooves etched in sidewalks so that visually impaired children will no longer fear walking toward the unexpected.
These are some of the features planned for the new Anchor Center for Blind Children when it opens next year.
“It is a building that will be a teacher on its own,” said JC Greeley, Anchor Center program coordinator and a teacher.
Children will join parents, staff, board members and donors when they break ground at 2 p.m. Thursday at the new building’s 2.2-acre site in the Stapleton neighborhood.
The Anchor Center’s Julie McAndrews Mork Building, named after a major donor and longtime Anchor Center supporter, will have 15,600 square feet, three times the size of the small, red-brick cottage on Martin Luther King Boulevard that is currently the center’s home.
Founded in 1982, the nonprofit center provides education and therapy services for children up to age 5 with little or no sight.
Almost every conceivable space in the new building, designed by lead architect Maria Cole and landscape architect Eric Grotty of Davis Partnership of Denver, addresses sight-impaired younsters’ needs.
The designers spent hours observing how the children respond to light, sound and surfaces. They decided on acoustic walls and angled them to deflect noise because blind children tend to be sensitive to sounds.
Recently, for example, a small boy began to cry during a tap- dance lesson in the Clayton College gym, where the students now go. He had been startled by the preschoolers’ soft tip-taps echoing off the nonacoustic walls.
Ribbed and textured carpets, as well as lights along floors, will help children find their way.
Outside is a path embedded with brass numbers and an alphabet written in Braille; a special gazebo for recess; and a patio where infants can be rocked. There’s also a grassy hill for climbing and tumbling down.
“We wanted to create a very warm and comforting environment for the children and parents,” said Cole. “We wanted a magical place, a fun and interesting place for kids to inhabit.”
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it gave an incorrect date for the groundbreaking ceremony. It is at 2 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 13th.
