Children were all smiles on Friday afternoon as the city re-opened the newly designed playground and splash pad at Sullivan Park.
“We were able to get this project finished and it’s beautiful,” Mayor Terry Ugulini told the gathered crowd. “It’s a great addition to the park.”
The new playground features large and colourful play structures with multiple slides and a climbing wall, a rubberized surface, benches, a smaller play structure with a slide for younger children, and a swing set.
The newly designed park also comes with a new splash pad, which features five tumbling buckets, a directional water jet, a waterbug, a bollard activator, a geyser, and a flower spray.
It has taken the city two months to reconstruct the park, start to finish — which meant that local residents could not get the most use out of the park this summer.
During his speech, Mayor Ugulini addressed criticism that it wasn’t the opportune time to undertake the project.
“People say: ‘Why do you do jobs at certain times of year?’ Well, it’s not so easy to call someone and be here tomorrow,” he said. “There’s a lot of work out there, there’s a lot of contractors and you got to get in the pecking order.”
Mayor Ugulini thanked City Hall staff for their diligent and hard work in getting the job done in such a short timeframe.
Sullivan Park is a place that means a great deal to Mayor Ugulini.
“I have a lot of history with this park,” he said. “I grew up on Rose Avenue and I used to come to this park all the time and play on the monkey bars, the swings, there used to be a tilt-a-whirl there — nothing like it is today, believe me.”
And the new playground equipment was clearly a hit with little ones. Children’s joyful screams amplified as City Hall staff turned on the splash pad and let the water flow.
It might be the end of summer, but at Sullivan Park there’s still some sunshine to be found.
