The City of Paris has high hopes for receiving a $500,000 grant that can help get an inclusive playground aimed at special needs children to get off the ground.
With substantial help from The Levi Miles Foundation, a local nonprofit that provides support and resources to children with disabilities and rare diseases, the city hopes to build the playground at Ogburn Park within the next 2-4 years.
A public input meeting Monday at Paris city hall included discussion of the playground, what type of equipment would be included and where it would be placed.
Kim Foster, Paris city manager, said the grant is for $500,000, with no local match. The city plans to submit its application for the grant on Friday.
Jessica Crouch, Foster’s administrative assistant, said the closest all-inclusive park is 60 miles away. The city sees the playground as a way for Ogburn Park to become a “second destination park in our community,” as Foster called it.
Eiffel Tower Park already receives a high volume of out-of-town visitors, with the splash pad, Eiffel Tower replica, Blue Cross Healthy Place playground, city swimming pool and pickleball courts among the big draws.
Foster said the first thought for the inclusive playground was to also put it at Eiffel Tower Park, but, upon study and conferring with Shayna and David Miles of The Levi Miles Foundation, Ogburn Park was deemed a better spot, thanks to how the park is configured and how much space would be available there.
In fact, the Mileses had been working on a similar plan already, with Ogburn Park as the desired location.
About two dozen people attended the meeting at Paris city hall, many of them family members of special needs children. They all seemed excited about the chance to have the playground here.
“We’re super-excited about the collaboration with The Levi Miles Foundation on this. We’re blessed to have them as partners,” Foster said.
In addition to the grant for the city, it’s thought the foundation will be able to raise money for the project as well.
Shayna Miles, president of the foundation, said this would be a fully certified inclusive playground.
“That means it would meet all the different levels of abilities for the children, from tots all the way to the bigger kids,” she said.
“We’re so excited. We think we’ll be able to draw people from surrounding areas to this,” said Debbie Jelks, the community outreach manager for the foundation.
Foster and Crouch said the grant recipients will be announced Aug. 18.
Even if the city doesn’t get the grant, that wouldn’t mean the project would be over.
“We would re-apply. The city is committed to doing something like this,” she said.
She did, however, caution against hopes the project would be done quickly if the grant is received. Allocation of the money wouldn’t take place until summer of 2024, then there would be long processes of acquiring equipment, arranging for construction, etc.
Some of the features the playground might include would be: a roll-on merry-go-round; wheelchair accessible roller slides; accessible swings; harnessed zip lines; musical pieces; a sensory maze; calming/serenity benches; wheel- or crawl-through tunnel; and a shaded rest area.
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