The Kiwanis Club of Springfield South, other area Kiwanis chapters, City Utilities, community partners and donors' broke ground last Friday on a new inclusive playground at Miller Park at Fellows Lake.
Kiwanis member and project coordinator Les Mace spoke about the long path of the project, from conception to groundbreaking.
“Five years or so ago our club,” Mace explained, “we were trying to come up with some kind of project that’d be a statement.” The club decided on playground equipment, but Mace said they couldn’t have been prepared for how ambitious the project became. They went from expecting to raise $100,000 to five times that, working with a wide variety of partners and donors.
The club chose Cunningham Recreation to construct the playground and partnered with a division of Cunningham called Play 4 All which helps communities raise funds for inclusive playground projects. Play 4 All helped Kiwanis raise $500,000 for the playground.
Kiwanis was also able to work with City Utilities, who donated the land at Fellows Lake and will carry out future upkeep. At the groundbreaking Kiwanis announced that the park will be named after significant donors The Hatch Foundation. The park will be known as “The Hatch.”
The park goes far beyond minimum ADA standards. It will include solid mobility friendly surfaces and equipment that can inspire active fun for all ability levels. They hope it will be finished this July.
It joins a list of recent inclusive playground projects in the area, including a park planned on the grounds of Praise Church in North Springfield and the Better Together Park under construction in Willard; and two completed inclusive playgrounds in Christian County at McCauley Park in Nixa and Grubaugh Park in Ozark.
KSMU’s Michele Skalicky took an in-depth look at inclusive playgrounds in our most recent episode of Making a Difference. Listen to and read it at this link.