STARKVILLE — The city of Starkville”s Parks and Recreation Department is preparing to add yet another feature to its award-winning Sportsplex facility on Lynn Lane.
Construction will begin soon on a playground designed specifically for toddlers. The playground will feature small sliding boards, decks and rubber ground surfacing for safety.
Mary Love Tagert, a Starkville Junior Auxiliary member who also serves on the city”s Park Commission said younger children in the community often don”t have as many pieces of playground equipment as their older brothers and sisters. Starkville Junior Auxiliary recently received a $4,000 grant from the Starkville-Oktibbeha Achieving Results organization, which it contributed to the playground project.
“The grant was written for a toddler playplex and that”s what this is: Something for 2- to 4-year-olds, because there isn”t enough equipment to fit that age group,” Tagert said.
The playground will be located between the parking lot and the bathrooms at the Sportsplex, off to the east side. The total cost is approximately $13,000 said Matthew Rye, director of the Parks and Recreation Department. The city contributed approximately $1,700 toward the playground; the SOAR grant covered $4,000, and Starkville Junior Auxiliary raised the rest, Rye said.
The city will install the playground, Rye said. He estimated it will be about two months before the structure is complete.
Miracle Recreation, the company that sold the playground to the city, will install the rubber mat surfacing. The idea is to expand the playground in the future, Rye said.
A groundbreaking is scheduled to take place Thursday at noon at the Sportsplex.
“As soon as the weather is permitting, we”re going to start installing it,” Rye said.
The playground will add to a complex that helped the Parks and Recreation Department win two awards this fall at the Mississippi Recreation and Park Association Conference in McComb.
Starkville won the award for Outstanding Facility Design among Class II Parks and Recreation departments for the Sportsplex facility. Class II Parks and Recreation departments are found in cities whose population lies between 15,000 and 34,000 people, Rye said. Starkville has a population of nearly 22,000, according to 2000 U.S. Bureau of Census data.
The Starkville Parks and Recreation Department also won the Outstanding Examples of Recreation Programming award for its Silly Sports Camp, which took place over several weeks this summer at the Sportsplex. Silly Sports camp staff taught area youth traditional sports, such as softball, volleyball and track and field, but added elements to make the activities “silly.”
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