Bellevue Square Park splash pad a safety hazard
Neighbours call for cleanup of ‘black slime’ creating slippery surface
There’s a bump ahead at Bellevue Square Park — as in fall and bump your head — for kids who lose their footing on a slippery splash pad.
It’s unlikely there’s a busier small park in all of Toronto than Bellevue Square, in the Kensington Market area. It’s a rare patch of green space in one of the city’s most densely populated neighbourhoods.
The city website says it is less than half a hectare, which sounds bigger than it looks. There were easily 200 people in the park when I was there Tuesday evening, under the watchful eye of a statue of Al Waxman, who earned his chops as an actor by playing The King of Kensington.
One of the features is a splash pad with a series of water jets that randomly shoot water into the air and onto the heads of kids who have been crowding into it over this relentlessly hot summer. A note from a reader who asked not to be identified said the surface of the splash pad is in need of a cleanup to remove a dark-coloured gunk that makes it deceptively slick.
The material covering the pad “is generally slip-proof, however, a black slime has developed over large portions of it,” said the reader.
“The slime is very slippery. I was there for about an hour on Saturday. My four-year-old slipped on it and I heard several other parents warning their kids to steer clear of it. Seems like it would come off with some scrubbing.”
Wearing my regulation safety flip-flops (steel-toed, Old Navy), I tiptoed onto the waterdrenched pad. It has a rubbery surface that provides a good grip on sections not covered by the black stuff, which appears to be mould.
But at least half the surface is mottled by the slime, which adds a greasy feel underfoot, when wet from the water jets. I knew it was slippery, so I edged out onto the gunk slowly and it still felt like skating.
Sooner or later — and it has likely already happened — an excited child will dash onto the pad, slip on the gunk and bump a head. And then there’ll be some howling. Status: Parks department spokesperson Jaclyn Carlisle emailed to say that a crew was dispatched Thursday morning to scrub off the black gunk.