Loganville park to receive specialized equipment

Photo credit: The Walton Tribune

A downtown Loganville public park aimed at young children is on its way to becoming even more welcoming to them, with the planned addition of equipment specifically for special-needs children.

Plans for the already popular Toddler Park, covering three-tenths of an acre on C.S. Floyd Road at Pecan Street, call for the expenditure of $300,000 in special-purpose local option sales tax dollars for the specialized play equipment and other amenities. All of the specialized equipment also can be enjoyed by any children using the play space, helping to integrate special-needs youngsters.

The council got the ball rolling on improving the park with a unanimous Thursday vote to allocate nearly $15,000 to Goodwyn Mills Cawood, an Atlanta-based architecture and engineering firm.

Documents submitted to the city by the firm show a number of brightly colored play landscapes and shade structures, along with large and colorful stationary musical instruments, Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)-accessible manual glider swings and a manually operated ADA-accessible merry-go-round.

In addition to SPLOST funding, the city is looking at the possibility of attracting grant dollars to potentially increase the scope of planned improvements at Toddler Park. 

The park became part of the city’s recreational landscape in 2005, and has long been a hugely popular play space.

Councilmember Patti Wolfe, who chairs the council’s Public Works Committee and is a staunch advocate of improving Toddler Park, told her council colleagues Thursday that making the space more inclusive could contribute significantly to officials’ efforts to redesign downtown as an inviting and well-used public space.

“If you build something that children want, the parents will be there,” Wolfe said. “If it (Toddler Park) is highly used now, imagine what this will do. I think the whole point of redesigning downtown is to bring people downtown.”

Discussion of improving Toddler Park got some pushback Thursday from Councilmember Branden Whitfield, who argued that the city’s Gaither Park, on Tommy Lee Fuller Drive north of downtown Loganville, is in greater need of upgrading than Toddler Park. 

Whitfield argued that bathroom facilities and basketball courts could greatly improve Gaither Park, and he went as far as suggesting that simply adding an ADA-accessible swing might be enough of an improvement for Toddler Park.

Whitfield’s comments sparked some council discussion of perhaps developing an improvement plan for Gaither Park. That discussion, however, fizzled as councilmembers worried over potential fiscal issues and other problems with proceeding with two park improvement plans at the same time.

Loganville Public Works Director Jeremy Armistead, asked at Thursday night’s meeting to weigh in on the issue, told the council, “Whatever you want to do with the parks, that’s what we’re going to do for you.”

All it takes, Armistead joked, is for councilmembers to “show me the money.”