A small European street, built for childhood.

Leena Hasbini was a new mother and a career educator when she began drawing the place she could not find. Weekends with her son, Laith, were spent in rooms designed for volume: loud, bright, and indifferent to the parent standing at the edge of them. She wanted the opposite. A place where someone notices that you have arrived with a sleeping baby and a toddler who has not, and quietly meets you at the door; where your coffee is the way you like it the second time you come, because somebody wrote it down; where a child is handed real things and trusted with them.

She holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Florida, along with a bachelor’s in business administration and a master’s in counseling from the University of South Florida, and spent almost a decade in public and private schools, where her district named her its employee of the year long before any of this had a name. That training shaped the curriculum The Little Play Avenue runs on, where every address on the street teaches something on purpose: the market counts and sorts, the patisserie takes turns, the theatre finds words, the hospital practises kindness. Her second love, interior design, shaped the rest. She designed the street herself, down to the millwork and the striped awnings, and planned the café so that a parent could spend two hours in it gladly.

I wanted my children to grow up somewhere that took their wonder seriously. When I couldn’t find it, I built it, for them and for every family who walks through our door.

The Little Play Avenue opened in May 2024, and the standard has not moved since: every family is greeted by name, every room is reset between sessions, and the small things are treated as the whole job. Leena will learn your child’s name on your first visit and use it on your second, and if you look for her on a busy morning you will usually find her cross-legged on the floor, in the middle of whatever the three-year-olds have decided is happening. In 2026 The Little Play Avenue was voted Best of Our Valley. She lives in Phoenix with her husband, Waseem, and their children, Laith and Leia. The Little Play Avenue opened two days after Leia was born, which is the entire story in one sentence.