Plymouth Park Board choose design for Hoosier Old Wheels playground renovation
On Monday, Mike Reese from the Troyer Group presented the Plymouth Parks and Recreation Board with four different designs for a playground near Hoosier Old Wheels in Centennial Park. It was funded by a Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
“This one, we’re renovating the playground and then also putting in that trail that connects from the bridge through the park all the way up to Plymouth-goshen Trail,” said Reese.
• Robinia Village Natural Playground Included would be a small castle, crawling pyramid, play hut, village house, forest cottage, hammock, rope pendulum swing, and a zip line. There would be grass mounds, engineered fiber mulch, and a concrete sidewalk around the playground.
• Tunnel Playground - Included would be two areas of slides, hill climber ropes, and various play equipment on a synthetic turf hill; supernova, double swing, arch ladder, spida, and butterfly. There would be poured in place surfacing, engineered fiber mulch, a tunnel connecting the two areas with synthetic turf underneath, and a concrete sidewalk around the playground.
• Space Rope Playground - Included would be a hexagonal jumping net, a star octa net, a freestanding
slide, a saucer swing, and an arc tunnel or tunnel bridge. There would also be poured in place surfacing and a concrete sidewalk around the playground.
• Multi-surface Hill Playground - BLOQX3, a Saucer Swing, a PAVO, a supernova, a spinner bowl, stepping pods of 1-2 feet, two hill climber ropes, a hill slide, and a zip line. There would also be engineered fiber mulch below the zip line, poured in place surfacing, synthetic turf, and a concrete sidewalk around the playground.
Reese said that there was about $220,000 for the playground which includes the equipment and the surfacing.
Board Member Laura Mann said that she was concerned about the Space Rope Playground because it could be an easy victim of vandalism. She favored the Robinia Village Playground because it looked like the sturdiest and more geared toward smaller children. Board Member Cayla Wade agreed with Mann.
Some of the other board members preferred the Multi-surface Playground. The vote came down to either the Robinia Village or and Multisurface. The vote came down to a 3-2 vote with the majority of the board in favor of the Multisurface Playground.
In other Park and Rec news, lifeguards for the city pool are needed. When asked about hiring for summer positions, Park Superintendent Mike Hite stated that the hiring process was going okay, but slow. He said that they may keep the application acceptance deadline open another week to allow more people to apply.
“It’s just very difficult to get people who want to work,” said Hite.
Morrow asked Collins if the city pool had enough lifeguards for the summer. “The lifeguards is really what we’re kind of hurting on,” she said. “We have quite a few camp counselor applications.”
Switching topics, Hite informed the board that vandalism has become “rampant.”
Hite wanted to let everyone that visits the parks to “keep your eye out, please give us a call or give the Plymouth Police Department a call if they see anything as far as damaging community property.”
“Everybody needs to help on that,” said Morrow.