Since 2011, the Bellevue Rotary Club has been raising money, making connections and generally doing whatever it could to make the Inspiration Playground a reality.

On Tuesday, the ground was broken on the all-inclusive park with a check from the Bellevue Rotary Club for over $3.3 million to get the project well on the way to completion.

Inspiration Playground is a play area designed for children and adults of all abilities to help bring down the barriers to be included. The playground will be in the southwest corner of Bellevue Downtown Park. Bellevue Rotary Club volunteered to raise all construction costs for the playground after the city of Bellevue committed to designing the plan and maintaining the finished park.

Washington State Sen.r Cyrus Habib knows the story of playground barriers all too well. Habib (D-Bellevue) lost his eyesight when he was just 8-years-old. It was on a playground at Somerset Elementary School in Bellevue where he first felt excluded because of his disability.

His mother made the case to administrators at the school that Habib should never feel left out for who he is.

“She said sure he might break his arm, but that’s a concern for mothers no matter what,” Habib said to the gathered group. “She told him, ‘I can fix a broken arm, but I can never fix a broken spirit.'”

He said that this park — which will be wheelchair accessible and have a quiet “sensory garden” area for children or adults with sensory disabilities to escape some of the noise of a typical playground — can help raise the spirits of children, not reinforce differences.

Rob Rose and Pat Naselow are Rotary members and co-chairs of the Inspiration Playground Committee, they have worked since Rose first walked into City Hall in 2011 to get the park underway.

In early 2012, Bellevue City Council approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the Bellevue Rotary Club, “outlining a partnership agreement to expand the existing Downtown Park playground with a focus on inclusive, accessible play opportunities.”

King County Councilwoman Claudia Balducci said her family’s personal challenges made the project near and dear to her heart.

“I have a son with hearing loss and mobility issues, and I wish we had something like this when he was little,” she said.

The golden shovels in the dirt on Tuesday afternoon were just another step to bringing the playground to fruition.

“This is the start of something really big for children and adults with and without disabilities,” Rose said. “We wanted to create a space in Bellevue where children and adults with and without disabilities could interact together in a natural play environment.”

T.J. Woosley, president of Bellevue Rotary, leaned on an old idiom to describe the success of the project so far.

“I’m not a big fan of that term, but it truly does take a village,” he said.

John Schwartz, president of the Bellevue Special Needs Parent Teachers Association, said that the upgraded playground would bring people together.

“Through the innocence of youth we often see non-disabled children engage in play with those that are [disabled],” he said.

Schwartz said adults begin to modulate their behaviors when around people in wheelchairs or with Down Syndrome, for example. Many children just see another friend to make, and we can learn a lot from their inclusiveness.

Mayor John Stokes told the crowd that the name “Inspiration Playground” alone was a wonderful addition to the city, and the location was important in expressing commitment to the large community of disabled Americans who call Bellevue, King County and Washington home.

“This is one of the things which defines Bellevue,” Stokes said of Bellevue Downtown Park. “It shows how important this playground is to us that we are putting it here. The Bellevue of tomorrow holds unlimited potential.”

Inspiration Playground, as well as the larger “Complete the Circle” Downtown Park project, is scheduled to be completed before the Fourth of July celebrations in 2017.

Pam Fehrman, project manager for Bellevue’s Parks Department on Inspiration Playground, said that time would be busy, but wonderful for the city.

“I think everybody in the community is going to be thrilled,” she said. “The Rotary has been an incredibly productive partnership.”