Splashpad opens just in time for fall heatwave
Sharau Scapillati’s two-year-old daughter Addison spent much of the summer watching the work underway to build a new splashpad at West Park, near their Powerview Avenue home.
The toddler asked her many times on hot summer days: “When are they turning the water on?”
“I said, ‘I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.’” Scapillati said.
Her long wait was finally over on Friday, and she smiled brightly and laughed as she ran through the sparkling water on an unusually hot first day of the fall season.
Addision and her baby brother Nash were among the first children to play in the newly completed splashpad, as St. Catharines staff and several councillors joined Mayor Walter Sendzik and Niagara-Centre MP Vance Badawey to open the newly completed $1.1-million in park improvements, that also include a new playground, outdoor fitness equipment and washrooms.
“We made a commitment to invest in neighbourhoods and this is a great example of what investment looks like, when you have a splashpad that’s come on line at a very perfect time, considering the weather,” Sendzik said in an interview after officially opening the upgraded park.
Although there’s only a few weeks left before the splashpad water is turned off at the end of September, depending on weather, the forecast calls for sunny weather and temperatures above 30C for the next four days, giving children like Addison a way to beat the heat in the days to come.
“I think the people of Western Hill will be very proud of this park, as will people from across the city,” Sendzik added.
St. Catharines landscape architect Stuart Green said the city had hoped to get the park open earlier in the summer to give children more time to enjoy the facility during the summer mmonths.
“If the stars align and everything goes to plan it’s done on July 1,” he said. “It doesn’t usually happen.”
He said the project had a few delays.
The adult fitness equipment, for instance, “turned out to be a bit of a custom piece that took longer than the rest of it,” Green said. “There was a little bit of delay there, but the end result was you get what you want.”
Rainy weather also delayed the project, that replaced a single piece of playground equipment and swing set that had been at the park for the past 18 years.
While the city pitched in $600,000 towards the project, the remaining $500,000 was contributed by the federal government through its Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program.
Sendzik said local businesses were also willing to “invest in this park, so we have a beautiful washroom, which is to the chagrin of some folks but the reality, it is now a great washroom which I’m proud to say was made by a manufacturer here in St. Catharines. Hy-Grade Construction built this facility.”
Niagara-Centre MP Vance Badawey said the investment “is all about people.”
He called the park a legacy for the city and the region as a whole, and will be a destination for the community.
In addition to the federal funding, the city also received $11,697 from the Ontario Tire Stewardship’s 2017 Community Renewal Fund, recognizing that recycled rubber from the equivalent of about 1,100 tires was used in the project.