The Town of Collingwood will re-open the playground spaces at Sunset Point next week, following nearly a year of construction and three years of planning.
The Sunset Point Park playground official grand reopening will take place Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 5:30 p.m. and there's an open invitation for anyone to attend.
Since 2019, the town has been running consultations with public groups to build a plan for the playground site to replace the structures that were built in 1993.
"Kids of all ages, from across the community, and from a variety of backgrounds and abilities were engaged ... to provide their insights in shaping the vision for this cherished community park," said Collingwood Mayor Keith Hull in a news release. "They will be able to see themselves in the finished product and a broad spectrum of youth will enjoy this outcome today, and in the decades ahead."
The cost of the playground project totalled about $2.6 million according to Dean Collver, director of parks, recreation and culture. He said the washroom building cost about $450,000.
The funding mostly came from the town's development charge reserves, which is set aside from the fees paid for new residential and commercial units built in Collingwood. The town received $1.17 million in other funding including a donation from EPCOR to the tune of $150,000, and $750,000 in gas tax allocation. Collver said there was another funding amount of $270,000, the details of which will be announced later. About $324,000 was drawn from the town's lifecycle reserve for the project.
The project total doesn't include the estimated $60,000 value of the harvest table pavilion donated by Ray Smith.
Originally called the EnviroPark, the town built the first playground with a water theme around the same time it was rehabilitating the water in the Collingwood harbour. The idea was to encourage and inspire future generations to be good stewards of water.
Accessibility and safety standards have since changed and the playground structures (mostly wood and concrete) have decayed over the last 30 years. The structures were demolished in October 2021 and construction on the new park began.
In June 2021, consultant David Wood from Envision Tatham, laid out a plan for the park and new playground structures that centred around Collingwood's features like a lighthouse, wetland, town hall and village, forest, amphitheatre, and beach.
The lighthouse play structure features a zip line leading to a parkour course and a slide in to "the bay," which is a blue rubber covered space on the ground with a ship play structure. The town village structure for tots is meant to give a nod to Collingwood's residential community.
The green and blue ‘wetlands’ play structure, complete with cattails, was inspired by the Silver Creek wetlands.
Between the youth and tot play spaces is a shaded social hub with picnic tables and USB charging stations where parents can clearly see both play areas.
Finally there’s ‘discovery beach’ which is a big sandbox, accessible for wheelchairs, with a concrete beach entry that will be inlaid with ‘fossils’ the kids can uncover.
A new washroom building was installed, as well as a harvest table and pavilion donated by a local family in memory of their late son.
