City dives into splash park idea
Children throughout Yellowknife call on council to build spray playground
Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Friday, July 17, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Parents of small children know road trips through northern Alberta would not be the same without the free spray parks installed in communities, from Sexsmith and Athabasca to Grande Prairie and Beaumont.
Back home, a growing group of children and parents are calling on city council to install a spray park at Somba K'e Civic Plaza and the municipality is listening.
Last summer, a proposal for a spray park was added to the long-term budget for 2017 after several dozen Grade 2 and 3 students from Range Lake North School made a presentation to Mayor Mark Heyck.
This past spring, Grade 4 and 5 students from Weledeh Catholic School launched a letter-writing campaign to support a spray park and now the mayor has requested the proposal to be bumped up to the 2016 budget.
Spray parks, also known as splash pads, feature apparatuses such as giant tipping buckets, two-metre-high arched sprinklers, animal-shaped water-sprayers and fountains. The water flows for a few minutes when activated by children.
"Yellowknife kids love to get outside in the summertime and certainly the popularity of Long Lake is evidence of how much people want to get out, cool off and splash around in the water," said the mayor. "But, Long Lake is not the most accessible place, particularly if you're a young kid without parents or a guardian or a babysitter to drive you around. Something located nearby that kids could splash around in, and get out and go to the playground and play on there for a bit, and splash around and cool off, I think, would be very, very popular. It would be a nice feature and amenity for Yellowknife and our kids."
Downtown business owner and mom Stacie Smith is among the parents supporting the construction of a spray park in the plaza. The infrastructure would not only provide fun for children on hot days, but would strengthen community ties, she said.
"I definitely think it would be ideal," Smith said. "It would be nice to bring kids together. It's nice for them to get that relief from that cold water and it's an easy way for them to make friends."
The spray park would also offer an added attraction for tourists, she said.
The city is in the early stages of gathering information from other communities with spray parks and from numerous equipment suppliers, according to Grant White, director of community services with the city.
"For something like this, we'll get as much feedback as we can from other municipalities, checking out their practices in terms of maintenance, if there's any shortcomings on any brand name, that sort of a thing," he said. "We're just getting the basics right now. Once we get a project approved we will go full steam ahead and do all the consultation."
A 2016 spray park project is expected to be voted on in council as part of the capital budget process in December.
According to general cost estimates supplied to Yellowknifer by Waterplay Solutions Corporation in British Columbia, spray parks can range from $30,000 for the most basic setup to $75,000 or more for more elaborate parks in communities similar to Yellowknife.
"Internally, we've been discussing a spray park for well over five or eight years," said White. "It's kind of nice that it's being pushed by some of the members of the community, especially the kids."
If the project proceeds in December, consultation with children and their parents would be scheduled for early 2016.
