City puts plenty of planning into updating playgrounds
Staff inspect sites, consult community when looking at replacing equipment
Of the roughly 175 playgrounds on City of Regina property, the city says about 30 are either in poor condition or suffer from “low play value.”
That’s city-speak for not fun enough. None of them are unsafe, staff insist, but many are too old to find replacement parts. With an annual renewal budget of $220,000, there’s only enough to replace about two per year.
Here’s how it happens:
On the ground, a team of playground inspectors regularly assesses how the structures are holding up. During the spring, they’re at each site on a weekly basis. They look at the nuts and bolts, the hooks and chains, to see if anything is wearing down.
“We go through and do a full inspection on everything,” said the city’s manager of parks maintenance, Charmaine Neufeld. “For example, on the swings that we can see here, they would take a look and make sure they’re structurally sound.”
Those swings are in McNab Park, the site of one of two playgrounds due for replacement this year. The swings aren’t the problem. A nearby structure with a slide has seen its manufacturer go out of business.
“If that slide failed, we would not be able to get a new slide,” Neufeld said. “We would remove it and block it off so it’s safe, but then you’re left with fewer parts that are fun to play on.”
That’s where another team gets involved. Janine Daradich is the manager of recreation planning and partnerships. She heads a unit that assesses the information coming in through Neufeld’s inspectors and decides where to invest those sparse renewal dollars.
Play value is a factor. Daradich defines it as “what children can do when they’re playing.”
“We have some sites that might have swings and a slide, whereas we have other sites that have play structures that allow for climbing and swinging and balancing and bouncing and a number of different play opportunities,” she said. “So that’s what we mean when we talk about play value.”
Her team, which includes qualified landscape architects, has information on what’s in every playground across the city. They try to be proactive, she said, renewing sites like McNab before their play value deteriorates. Staff also try to ensure the work is distributed fairly across all neighbourhoods in the city, according to Daradich.
Once they make a renewal decision, her department goes back to the community association, and local residents to figure out what they want to see in their new play space.
“It’s all about talking to the community, finding out what the community wants, finding out what the kids in the area want so that we’re replacing it with a playground that people are going to like to visit and make use of,” Daradich said. “We send out playground surveys to all of the households surrounding a playground that we are going to be renewing. We also put that survey online for people to access, so they can go on and tell us what exactly they want to do when they go out on a playground to play.”
The survey results help staff craft a request for proposals. Daradich’s people then choose a supplier, and go back to the community association to make sure they’ve got it right.
“Do you think we’ve hit the mark or do you think we need some tweaks?” her staff ask.
“From there, the supplier will make whatever changes we’ve discussed and then we’ll move forward.”