The Playground Moves Indoors

Screening rooms. Golf simulators. Wine cellars. Bike storage. Desirable amenities, one and all. But as New York City grows ever more kid-friendly – and wealthy – a growing number of co-op and condo boards are taking the amenities race to a new place: indoor playrooms for kids.

From the Upper East Side to Battery Park City to Hoboken, playrooms for kids are becoming more ubiquitous and more elaborate, the New York Times reports. The trend began about a decade ago, before the real estate market crashed, and it’s now inspiring boards to give interior spaces over to spaceships, tugboats, lighthouses, talking giraffes, bean-bag boulders, and tree forts. The sworn enemy is boredom.

“Children are very sophisticated these days, so it can’t just be Barbie or Barney anymore,” says Nancy Ruddy, whose architecture firm, CetraRuddy, designs high-end apartment buildings.

“What we hear from developers is that New York parents just don’t know what to do with their kids during the day,” says Caroline Petitti, a designer with Roto, a creator of science centers and children’s museums. “So it can’t be an everyday space, or something you would get at home, or the children get bored.”

We can't have that.