Winfield City Park gets new playground

WINFIELD — Residents of Winfield may have recently noticed a lack of playground equipment at the city park, however, this is only a temporary state for the location as years of planning finally begin to come to fruition for new equipment.

According to City Clerk Angie Oepping, in June 2021 Jennifer (Wade) Lemke and Tom Rodruck, acting as the playground committee, Utility Clerk Lisa Rees and Mayor Willie Bender met with a salesperson from Boland Recreation to discuss options for playground equipment.

“At the April 2022 city council meeting, the city council approved which playground option would best fit the city’s needs and where to place the playground equipment,” Oepping shared.

According to Oepping they decided to replace the current playground equipment at the city park with new equipment instead of the other option of placing the new equipment at the ballpark.

As a day care owner in Winfield, Lemke says new equipment was extra important to her and she kept after the idea even as it took a long time to see it come together.

“We finally had a chance a few years ago when our playground was kind of splitting in some of the hard plastic areas where we were like, yes, we’re going to have to get rid of it,” Lemke said. “So it became more pressing on our list of things to do.”

The total equipment cost came in at $58,447. $25,500 of this is paid for through grants and $5,821 comes from fundraising.

According to Lemke, Rees wrote many of the grants to find funding for the project and the rest came from delegated funds from the Parks and Recreation Department.

“We looked at a couple different options,” Lemke shared.

With an understanding the older kids would use the school equipment during school days and even outside of school time, Lemke encouraged the committee to consider choosing more accessible play equipment for younger children.

“So, we wanted to definitely make it safe. We also looked at stuff that was ADA Accessible,” Lemke said.

The moneys achieved through fundraising came from a donation made by a grandmother that lost her granddaughter.

According to Lemke, this woman wanted swings placed in the park in memory of her granddaughter, so, that also played a role in the decisions for the playground.

“We have a regular swing and then we also have a handicap accessible swing as to get all of the age groups and all of the people involved in our activities,” Lemke said.

Lemke hopes this new addition will bring more families to the city park which already contains a gazebo, picnic tables and benches.

While she hopes that the equipment will be installed before winter, right now, the committee is seeking an engineer willing to donate their time to the project before installation can begin.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com