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New equipment coming to Sheldon Park
By Gloria Tucker
Nevada Daily Mail
With a cost ranging from $25,000 to $50,000 for new playground equipment, renewing Sheldon park's playground seemed like a distant dream.
Striving to make that dream a reality, the Sheldon park board found a sale for equipment, and park board member Amanda Hall began scouring Sheldon and Nevada for funding.
The $20,000 Simon Says playground equipment includes three slides, one inclined wall climber, one whistle, wood playground mulch, playground border with surfacing and an accessible half ramp.
The town of Sheldon committed $4,000, plus $5,500 for installation. Missouri Welding Institute committed $1,000. Softball tournaments at the park raised more than $7,000. The Sheldon Masonic Lodge pledged $1,000. An anonymous donation came through Community Foundation of Southeast Kansas for $4,000. Heathy Nevada approved a grant for $4,000 toward the project.
The Alice Donaldson Trust, the estate of a Sheldon native, pledged to double every individual dollar donated for the playground, up to $5,000.
Now, no longer a dream, the playground equipment will be installed the week of Sept. 9 in the Sheldon park.
"We hope to have it up and operational by Sept. 12 or 13," Hall said. "This project will assist in making Sheldon Park a much safer and exciting place for our children to stay active, improve their social skills and fight off childhood obesity. Having newer and safer playground equipment will be a magnet for our Sheldon youth to be active at the Sheldon park. Parents will be more likely to bring their children to the park if they feel their children will be in a safe environment."
She said the playground equipment also represents a significant improvement in its ADA compliance.
"We believe this will make the park a more accessible place for community members who have physical disability concerns," she said. "With these improvements, we anticipate the park will be a source of community pride and will draw even more people and activity."
She added more improvements to the park are in the works.
"We will be having the ball field fence repaired and installing more benches and picnic tables," she said. "We also hope to replace the wood mulch with funds from a Scrap Tire grant in the late spring or summer."