A popular park in Walkerville is receiving an upgrade.
The City of Windsor has begun construction on a new accessible playground at Optimist Memorial Park.
The project includes a new large accessible nature-forest themed playground, rubber surfacing, a new sidewalk around the perimeter, and new site furnishings.
Construction is scheduled to take place from the beginning of July through mid-August.
This $466,000 project comes as part of the city’s Playground Replacement Program, which aims to replace multiple city playgrounds.
Ward 4 councillor Mark McKenzie says this has been a long time coming.
“I’ve been working on this since day one of being elected, and we finally got it added to the budget last year, and then there were some delays, so it didn’t end up getting finished last year. And so now it’s finally breaking ground early this month, and then they’re hoping to have it completed before the end of August.”
He says the public got to pick the theme.
“We did have some public consultation on this; there was a survey involved where we asked residents ‘which option do you like best’, and it ended up being narrowed down to two. So, it had the natural-forest themed one, and then the other one was a veterans-type playground to go with the theme of Memorial Park, and we have the cenotaph there as well. And the nature-themed one ended up winning.”
McKenzie says the paved sidewalk and additional benches were needed.
“That was one of the big complaints that we had with the current playground, besides the fact that it still has sand and rocks around it instead of that nice rubberized ground, is the fact that there weren’t enough benches around it. So, we’re moving the playground a little bit closer to the parking lot and the gazebo, and then we’re going to add in some more benches.”
For the safety of residents and construction crews, the playground area will be closed throughout the construction period.
This project is in addition to the $16.3-million in investments to replace 35 playgrounds around the city.