Pine Tree Townhouses, a subsidized-housing complex near 19th Street and Haskell Avenue, has 160 housing units, dozens of young children and no toddler swings.

The rocking horses at the complex’s main playground limp slightly to the side, and the nearby basketball court is uneven and cracked.

Chloe Sheridan is tired of the poor playground equipment. So the 10-year-old resident recently started selling lemonade and baked goods to raise money for what she calls the “Playground Enhancement Fund.”

“I just wanted everyone to be happy and have a nice playground,” said Chloe, who will be a fifth-grader next year at Quail Run School. “Kids need to have fun. It’s summer.”

The girl with freckles and short, spiked-up hair has raised about $40 so far. The next two weekends, she’ll set up her stand at The Red Dresser, 626 N. Second St., a refurbished-furniture shop owned by her mother, Rachael.

Chloe predicted that this weekend she would raise $500.

“I think she’s a hard-working little girl,” said her aunt, Hannah Sheridan, assistant manager at Pine Tree. “She has a lot of initiative.”

Unlike many public housing sites, Pine Tree is a cooperative that’s owned by its occupants and overseen by a resident board. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development subsidizes residents’ payments and guarantees their mortgages, Hannah Sheridan said.

She estimated the playground equipment had been the same since the early 1970s, when the complex was built. The cooperative has its hands full with so many repairs — replacing the siding on all of the buildings, for example — that playground equipment takes a back seat to shelter needs.

The playground equipment at Pine Tree Townhouses, 149 Pinecone Drive, is in bad shape, and 10-year-old Chloe Sheridan, center, is doing something to help the neighborhood children. Sheridan is planning lemonade stands and bake sales to raise money to replace taken-down toddler swings, 20-year-old rocking horses and resurface the basketball court.

“Our neighborhood doesn’t have a lot of money to do this,” Chloe said.

The situation worsened last summer after a 5-year-old girl got her legs stuck in a toddler swing and had to be cut out by firefighters, Hannah Sheridan said. After that happened, the complex’s maintenance workers took down all the toddler swings, she said. They have yet to be replaced.

The lack of toddler swings is an inconvenience for resident Patty Graves, who has a 4-year-old daughter and watches a 1-year-old niece during the day. Graves used to have a toddler swing and a bigger swing at a swing set near her townhome, but now only the bigger swing remains.

“It looks really junky and trashy,” she said. “This is a community that has a ton of kids. Sharing the swings — that becomes very difficult.”

In the evenings, whenever Chloe goes outside to use one of the two swings left in the complex’s central playground, “there’s like 20 people in line waiting,” she said. Last month, she decided to go before the cooperative’s board and ask permission to start her fund-raiser.

¢ 6News video: Fifth-grader hard at work in hopes of refurbished playground

Her priorities are as follows: First, seven or eight new swings to be placed at playgrounds around the complex, which could cost about $600. After that, a new coat of paint for the swing sets, then new rocking horses.

If she still has money to spare, she wants to resurface the basketball court. She’s not sure what cause she’ll take up when she finishes with the Playground Enhancement Fund.

“It’s really my priority for now,” she said.