The Friends of Felstead Park are looking for private-sector help to fix their public park.
Members of the group believe they've done all they can to persuade the city to take an immediate interest in their neglected community green space near Danforth and Greenwood Aves. 
The Felstead Avenue Playground is home to unsafe equipment and a splash pad that hasn't been in operation for years, area residents say. The park is poorly lit and landscaped, providing cover for assaults and drug users.
Friends of Felstead member Jeremy Buffett says they have been vigilant in trying to get the city to act on their concerns. Meetings have been scheduled with their councillor, Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) and her staff.
The group even invited police officers to inspect the park and recommend how to deter crime.
But according to information from the city's parks, forestry and recreation department, funding for the changes will not materialize until 2013. The focus of the Friends of Felstead has now shifted to finding a good corporate citizen to help kickstart the project.
Buffett says the city told the group that the project would be more attractive if it was on the arm of a corporate sponsor and would have a better chance of being ushered to the front of the line ahead of the 2013 budget.
"We thought, let's try to attract a private company and have the city work with this company on the park at the same time," Buffett says.
It wasn't that radical an idea. Neighbours knew of a public-private partnership that had rescued McCleary Playground at Queen St. E. and McGee St., west of Logan Ave.
Bruce Sudds is an executive director at Maple Key, a not-for-profit foundation that helps people and communities work with government and other agencies in order to “achieve their own self-defined goals,” its website says.
His organization helped facilitate a partnership with ING Direct that saw the $300,000 revitalization of McCleary Playground in 2009. The financial company took the tiny Leslieville park under its wing and transformed the space.
Since May, Sudds has been helping the Felstead group try to make the same sort of match.
“The park improvement budget is a capital budget, where the city decides where to allocate [funds] and determine their priorities,” Sudds says. The parks department said if third-party funding could be found for the project, "they could probably move it up the agenda.”
Sudds says there is little to no indication that ING Direct was responsible for the renovation of McCleary Playground.
“There’s no branding in there,” Sudds says. “I have a 4-year-old daughter; I don’t want to send her to a park that’s full of advertising ... It’s not something we’d do.
“ING Direct came in because of that — it wasn’t a marketing or PR move, it was team-building. They actually gave that money out of their HR budget and all of their staff came out to help the community build and design the space.
“When it happens that way, I think, ‘Wow, that’s a great corporate citizen.’ ”
The private backing allowed McCleary Playground to become an eco-friendly natural playground, something the Felstead group wants to emulate.
"It's an eco-sensitive model," Buffett says. "The sandboxes are made out of logs, the playground equipment are boulders and the slides are built into shelves rather than being large structures. There's a lot of attention paid to landscaping."
While the Felstead group hasn't found a financial angel yet, Sudds hopes this partnership model will work out. He expects that businesses will be called on more in the future to help with community infrastructure.
“We’re still paying all those taxes, but now we’re also asking the corporate sector to chip in, too,” Sudds says. “It’s a change.”