Whirl Construction Inc.

Whirl Construction Inc. creates amenities for outdoor recreation

Ralph Fuller

A family business: At Whirl Construction Inc. Founder Jim Davis Sr. (center) serves as President, his wife, Terry, as Corporate Secretary and Jim Davis Jr. as Vice President.

In 2018, Whirl Construction Inc. installed this playground at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ, with its commanding views of the Manhattan skyline. It replaced an earlier one the company built in 2000.

For Whirl Construction Inc. (Whirl), building playgrounds for kids is as routine as taking a walk in the park. But, then, they build a lot of amenities for parks, too.

“We’ve established a solid niche in constructing playgrounds for kids,” says Jim Davis Jr., Vice President at Port Monmouth, New Jersey-based Whirl. “But we also do a broad array of non-playground park projects. We build or install everything from park benches, picnic tables and bicycle racks to shelters, gazebos, water fountains, kiosks, concession stands and information booths."

“We build bocce courts and fitness trails. We install the posts, backboards and fences for basketball and tennis courts. And, we construct restrooms and concession buildings for the people who use all these things.”

In other words, playgrounds and stuff for big kids, too.

Also in their repertoire: dog parks, with ramps, tube tunnels and pedal-operated doggy fountains.

A Man and A Shovel

Adds Whirl President Jim Davis Sr., “We founded the company in 1982 to focus on things for kids to climb on and play on, and we’ve done thousands of installations since."

“Some years ago, we realized we were also good at building and installing the things that parks need to make them enjoyable for the public. Park amenities are a growing segment of our business. Today, about 20 percent of our work involves them.”

Jim Sr. first got a taste of playground construction 40 years ago when, living in Port Monmouth, he helped his brother-in-law’s general construction company build a playground in neighboring Matawan. At the time, he operated a delicatessen, but the long hours and seven-days-a-week workload was wearing on him. And, he realized he liked working outdoors.

His brother-in-law shifted his company’s focus to other work but Jim Sr. sensed an opportunity and started Whirl Construction the next year. He incorporated the business two years later. The name “Whirl” is a play on the motion of merry-go-rounds.

“I started with one employee, one shovel, one posthole digger and one shale bar,” Jim Sr. says. “Now we have 25 employees, including carpenters, laborers, machinery operators, people skilled in masonry and stone veneers and other specialties.” The company also has two dozen pieces of equipment, including 12 trucks, a backhoe, skid steers and a concrete curb extruding machine that allows flexibility in design and layout. Today, 90 percent of the company’s digging is done by machinery.

One of Jim Sr.’s earliest employees was Jim Jr., who grew up working on his dad’s projects after school and during college. His first assignment, he recalls, was cleaning up the work site at a tennis center Whirl was building. After graduating from Pennsylvania’s Moravian College in 1993, he joined the company full time. Today, Jim Sr., still President, is semi-retired and Jim Jr. oversees day-to-day operations.

In 2019 Whirl Construction was recognized with one of 12 “Contractor of the Year” finalist awards by Equipment World magazine.

Finding a Niche

“Some 50 percent to 60 percent of our business is new construction,” Jim Jr. says. “Playgrounds tend to need replacing when they’re 15 to 25 years old, so some 20 percent to 30 percent of our work is taking down old ones and putting new ones in their place. That’s the job security end of the business. The remainder of our work generally takes the form of retrofitting or upgrading existing equipment.

“Our clients tend to be public entities—town, county and state governments, public schools, PTAs. Some 5 percent to 10 percent involves playgrounds for private organizations, like private schools, day care centers, country clubs and residential developments.”

Installing parks and playgrounds tends to make for a niche industry, which means that there are only 200 or so companies in the United States that specialize in it, perhaps six in New Jersey that work in the field actively. The area Whirl serves is densely populated so there’s a lot of work for the company within a 90-mile radius, including New Jersey, parts of New York and Pennsylvania.

By the same token, finding workers with playground-construction experience is rare, so company staff train new employees on the job. And, the National Playground Contractors Association Inc. (NPCAI) offers a two-day program called Recreational Installation Specialist Certification (RISC). It teaches participants the full process of playground construction from concept to completion, starting with a patch of grass and taking it through equipment installation, safety surface and borders.

The supply side of commercial playground equipment is similarly narrow; there are only 10 or so companies nationally who manufacture these products. They do, however, offer installation certification and training.

Design-Builds for Terrains, Age Groups

For a company like Whirl, playground construction is a design-build operation, with each new playground fitted to the owner’s choices and the terrain where it’s to be built. And, of course, local, state and federal regulations are followed, from environmental to safety to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility.

Once plans are developed, the Whirl team prepares the area, leveling the site and preparing the sub-base for the planned construction. Uprights, decks, ramps, climbing bars, slides, tunnels and other features come next, preceding installation of the surface.

The gold standard of playground surfaces is poured rubber, materials created with tiny granules of TPV, mixed and poured on site together with a binder. It comes with a long life expectancy and can be ordered in a range of colors. It meets environmental, safety, American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and ADA standards.

These days, playground equipment is typically made with steel tubular pipes. Platforms are usually hot-dipped with rubber coatings. Some features, like slides, may be plastic. Two changes in playground ambiance over the years: the appearance of more shade structures strategically placed above equipment to protect kids from sun and heat, and an increased emphasis on age-appropriate equipment.

As an example, Jim Jr. cites a standout replacement installation Whirl did two years ago at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, just across the Hudson River from New York’s Manhattan. It has two distinct clusters of equipment, one for kids ages 2 to 5, the other for children ages 5 to 12. The difference: Overhead climbers and higher platforms can be found on the units for the older kids while lower decks and fewer overhead climbers are present on the structures for younger kids. Children in the younger age group tend to be physically less developed and may lack the upper body strength to negotiate overhead climbers spanning long distances, Jim Jr. notes.

A Question of Community

Playgrounds and parks don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re places for and of people, which is why the Whirl team pays attention to playground trends, developments in play theory, popular equipment and safety improvements. And kids. “We make a point of listening to kids on playgrounds, meeting with parents at PTA sessions and working with equipment manufacturers,” Jim Jr. says.

A reverence for the human side of the equation is evident when he talks about Liberty State Park. Whirl did the original playground installation in 2000, replacing it with an entirely new installation in 2018. Between those events, of course, the Manhattan skyline directly across the river had changed dramatically with the collapse of the iconic twin towers of downtown Manhattan’s World Trade Center in the 9/11 terrorist attack and their replacement with the Freedom Tower.

“It was quite moving to be in that spot, with the changed view of Manhattan,” he says. “It made it an honor to work there.” In a similar way, the Davises emphasize a commitment to community service. Another moving moment: a state-of-the-art playground at an elementary school in memory of a student who had died from cancer.

A non-park, non-playground project father and son are proud of is a substantial access ramp at the home of Middletown, New Jersey, resident Angel Coriano, a disabled Navy veteran dealing with significant mobility issues. Partnering with Middletown Township and the local VFW post, Whirl designed and built a four-stage, all-access ramp to the house’s front door, along with a side walkway to the backyard.

“In our role as contractors we work to make life for kids and families more meaningful and enjoyable,” says Jim Sr., a Navy veteran himself. “But we should never forget the sacrifices heroes like Angel have made to secure the lives we enjoy today.”

 

https://www.thebluebook.com/southern-and-central-new-jersey/articles/s21-fs2-playgrounds-and-parks-for-kids-of-all-ages.html