Ladies and gentlemen, if you aren’t doing anything tomorrow, load up the kids and head over to the 7600 block of North Broadway tomorrow for the 10AM grand opening of the new Hobby Hill West Park playground and interpretive nature area.
Here’s the invitation that I found on the Gladstone Chamber of Commerce FB page.
The western edge of the park was rather overgrown with honeysuckle and not very inviting. Now the western edge of the park looks like this with the picture taken from the hill on the southern edge of the park looking north with Broadway on the left.
The playground design is a pure active playground which we desperately need north of the river. The signature piece is a large climbing slide contraption. This is looking northeast from the parking lot entrance.
The circular trail goes between the pond and stream and the playground and connects to active workout type play equipment. This is looking towards the east.
There was a lot of rock on the site and the designers and contractors used a lot of it within the site to create plenty of climbing places and also for parents to watch.
The four-year-old and every other kid there loved the “gazelle freestyle” thing.
Playground also had the now very important saucer swings which are always being used.
The park also had the all-important ZIPLINE!!!!
The designers and contractor also terraced the limestone as a natural amphitheater.
This is going to become our other go-to park (other being the YMCA Challenger Park). I encourage you to get out tomorrow. The weather will be great and if you want more of these types of things, your elected officials need to know. A lot of times parks and trails projects take heat for costing too much when other things are “more necessary” but I’ve watched over $2M go towards buying right of way from one owner on the Flintlock Flyover project, nearly $2M to relocate the west outer road north of I-29 and NW 64th Street, over a half a million dollars for one parcel on Englewood Road, and many millions of dollars to widen Barry Road by Zona Rosa/other northland streets. I’m always amazed at how spending gobs of money for property for cars is okay but park improvements that help our neighborhoods gets scrutinized especially when so many kids are facing weight issues with the corresponding adult health care costs.
Show up tomorrow and thank the Gladstone Mayor, City Council, and staff for all the work that went into getting this project done. You can also check out this really neat background kiosk which uses an old USGS topo map as the background. Don't think that I'm not stealing that idea as my own.
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