Chapman Playground shows off new renovations at July 1 grand opening

Date: 7/3/2012

July 4, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

debbieg@thereminder.com

WESTFIELD — The 70-year-old Chapman Playground on St. Paul Street celebrated a facelift on July 1, unveiling a host of upgrades and remodels designed to better fit the needs of the families now populating its surrounding neighborhoods.

Though the newly-planted grass wasn't completely greened up in time for the park's grand opening, Westfield Park & Recreation Department Program Coordinator Jim Blascak said just about everything else was ready to welcome visitors.

"Both playscapes are complete, the swing set is up, the spray park is completed and the parking lot — which is new — has been completed," he said, adding that though the striping hadn't been finished on the refurbished basketball court, the hoops and nets would be ready for play shortly and the court had been resurfaced. He noted that both playscapes are handicapped accessible.

Blascak said visitors would see other improvements to the 3-acre space, including updated bathrooms, a new open-air pavilion and a walking path around the perimeter of the park. An earthen ramp that stretched between the new, 39-space parking lot and the dike that borders the park has the potential to become an access point for the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail when it reaches the neighborhood, he added. And though the Chapman spray park isn't as large as the one located at the Municipal Playground, he expected it would become one of the more popular areas of the park.

"It's really a benefit for all the young families moving into the neighborhood that they have a brand new park they can use," Blascak said.

Plans to renovate the park, which was created in 1922 through a donation made by Maria Chapman in memory of her husband, William J. Chapman, began in 2010 when the city used grant money to hire R. Levesque Associates to draft a conceptual design. Blascak said the city applied for a Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities (PARC) grant totaling $50,000 for the park in 2011, and received the money last fall. Supplemented by a $467,955 appropriation from the City Council, that grant was used for final design and construction purposes, and Blascak said work on the park began late last fall, culminating in this summer's grand opening.