A rendering of the proposed playground at Marine Park.
By BRIAN DONOHUE
For anyone who’s raised kids in Red Bank over the past several decades, it’s a fact that ranks anywhere from minor bummer to disheartening truth: our town’s playgrounds are okay, but really? Well, meh. And when you want to go to a really cool playground or one fit for a kid with disabilities, you need to travel out of town.
The Borough Council took a major step to change that Thursday, moving forward with plans for a new $2.2 million playground at Marine Park on the Navesink River that would provide the town with an accessible playground that seems likely to boost the ‘wow’ factor for the under-twelve set.
The plans include a faux pirate ship embedded into the slope of the berm so a kid in a wheelchair can get aboard. Special swings for kids and other adapted features for kids with disabilities. And a zip line and tall “cube tower” with a slide for the more adventurous.
The playground is part of the next phase of a long-planned $4 million makeover of Marine Park, funded by a mix of grants and borrowing.
Phase two also includes the creation of a grassy expanse of open space on the site of the current parking lot in the eastern corner of the park along the water. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring on the lawn portion of the park.
The new parking lot, in the southwest corner of the park on Union Street, opened late last year as part of the first phase of the project.
John Marshall, sales rep for Kompan, the Austin, Texas playground company tapped to build the playground, told the council it’s bound to spark a reversal of parents’ traveling elsewhere in search of better playground options. He described the proposed playground as one that’s “thrilling, with staying power.”
“It truly is going to be a sight to see that’s going to service this community, but a lot of communities will end up being here,” he said.
The Borough is seeking $750,000 in state funding for the project under Jake’s Law, a 2019 bill signed by Gov. Phil Murphy that incentivizes counties to build playgrounds suitable for children and adults with disabilities. The council held a public hearing at Thursday’s meeting for its grant application, due in early February.
Barbara Boas, a resident of Branch Avenue and member of the borough planning board, spoke in support of the project, recounting times during her 40-year teaching career when she would see kids with disabilities unable to play on schoolyard playgrounds.
“There’s nothing that breaks your heart more than seeing a kid standing in the corner of the playground because there’s nothing he can ride on, nothing he can play with,” she said. “Do whatever you can, spend as much money as you damn well please, and do it right. Please. These kids deserve it.”
A total of twelve trees will be removed for the next stage of the project, including four for the playground area, according to an environmental impact statement by borough engineers CME Associates.
That’s far less than earlier renderings of the project, which indicated 34 of the park’s 40 trees would be felled.
Still, Councilwoman Nancy Facey Blackwood said members of the borough’s Shade Tree Committee “expressed concern” about the trees and landscaping. She remarked that the project, when finished, would result in “more trees than we have there today,” she said.
Council members praised the plan before voting unanimously to approve the grant application.
Council Member David Cassidy recounted having to travel to Dorbrook Park in Colts Neck to find a better playground than Red Bank’s offerings. And Deputy Mayor Kate Triggiano pointed to Kompan’s other projects in Brooklyn and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as proof of the level of their work.
“There’s going to be a 40-foot zipline,” she said of the Marine Park plans. “Who doesn’t want a 40-foot-zipline?” (Editor’s note: Triggiano later said she mis-stated the length of the zipline, which will she said will be 80 feet long, not 40 feet. )
In other park news, the Council went into executive session to discuss the acquisition of the land on which Count Basie Fields partially sits from the Red Bank Borough Board of Education.
The schools have long owned a portion of the on which the park is built, leasing the land to the borough. That lease emerged as a possible snag last year in the borough’s application for state funding to help pay for new the bleachers at the park.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your level of monthly or annual contribution.
