The new Lions Den Park playground will have handicapped accessible equipment and sidewalks with a wide variety of play equipment for activities. Covered areas will provide shade.
The Orange City Council Tuesday voted to go with Design 1 of three proposals submitted by the city from playground equipment companies.
The design is by May Recreation of Houston. The council chose to keep the orange and gray colors the company submitted, though other colors could have been selected.
Public Works Director previously said the city asked for proposals from three companies for designs with a $450,000 budget. All three companies are approved bidders through the state Buy Board cooperative that offers bidded prices to all government entities.
At a meeting last month, all the councilors liked the May Recreation design best. Drawings of the three designs were displayed in the Orange Public Library and posted on the city’s Facebook page for public comment.
At-Large Position 6 Councilor Paul Burch and Mayor Larry Spears Jr. said Tuesday the comments they had all liked the May Recreation proposal.
The previous Lions Den playground was wooden and built more than 20 years ago. The city tore it down earlier this year after an engineer declared it unsafe. The city had saved $547,000 to spend on a new playground.
Citizens during a public workshop before the covid 19 pandemic rules were set said they wanted open equipment so children can been seen by adults. They also wanted handicapped accessible equipment.
Wolf said the playground exceeds the minimum standards for the Americans with Disabilities Act. The concrete sidewalk will have a special rubber coating to make it easy for wheelchairs to travel. He said the cost of the sidewalk was not in the $450,000 budget given for the playground equipment.
In other business, the council approved pre-disaster contracts with local groups. A contract with LSCO will allow a building on campus to be used for evacuees to take public buses to a safe site.
The contract with the LC-MCISD will allow the city to use the school district’s buses for an evacuation and district buildings, if needed.
A contract with St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church on Meeks Drive will let the city’s contract caterer use the church’s facilities to feed city workers and officials who stay to provide services during a disaster.
The council meeting was held through video or phone conference on the GoToMeeting program because of pandemic distancing guidelines.
During the public comments segment of the meeting, a resident in the Alden Street neighborhood off 16th Street and Sunset Drive, asked the council for help getting people to stop dumping trash on a vacant lot that the city sometimes mows because the owner does not keep the land. She said people start leaving trash on the lot soon after the city cleans it.
The neighbor said the lot at Alden and Lutcher draws people to dump trash, which blows to other yards. She also said people park on the lot. She requested the city put up signs saying ‘No Dumping’ and ‘No Parking.’
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
(views from different angles)
Social Media