New Latimer Lakes Park playground opens
Photo: A view of the new Latimer Lakes Park playground facility, which opened on Monday afternoon, Feb. 26. It replaces a 20-year-old playground which was deteriorating. (Bob Bakken/desotocountynews.com)
Youngsters visiting Latimer Lakes Park in Horn Lake have a brand new place to swing and slide with completion of a new playground at the park. A ribbon cutting event was held Monday afternoon to officially open the new area.
It’s a new area, but Horn Lake Parks Director Drew Coleman said it actually replaces an old playground that had gotten to be pretty much unusable.
“The last playground was installed around 20 years ago and it started to deteriorate,” Coleman said. “We were getting some complaints from the citizens asking when we were going to modernize it and fix it up. I started looking into that and made that our number one priority to replace that playground over there.”
The new playground construction was put out for bid with Mid-South Recreation being the successful bidder at a cost of about $194,000. Coleman said a feature was added to the new playground that the old one did not have.
“One of the big complaints was that there were no swings, so we decided to take one feature, remove it and replace it with swings,” Coleman said.
You will also find shade canopies, nine slides and other features kids will enjoy playing on. It’s all on rubber surfacing to cushion the fall of slips and slides.
Look for the 4,000-square-foot playground to be open and available after Monday afternoon, Coleman said, adding the City is happy the new addition is set to be enjoyed. However, Coleman hopes that is not the only playground set to go up at Latimer Lakes Parks.
“We’re going to try to get another playground which will be all ADA inclusive,” he said. “We’re going to try to put it out for bid very soon once I get the specs and then we’re going to try to install that by the tennis courts. That’s going to be around 6,200 square feet for that particular playground.”
Coleman is confident the playground enhances the city’s main parks and recreational facility, which also include football fields, frisbee golf course, and a new fitness court area and more.
