By ROBERT LINNEHAN | The Voorhees Sun
A new playground will be built on Connolly Park in October to help fill the void of the demolished Main Street playground that so many in the community enjoyed.
The Township Committee received $25,000 in grant money from the state for the purchase of playground equipment, Township Administrator Larry Spellman revealed last week.
It will be a community project, he said, with residents invited to come out to the park on the weekend of Oct. 9 to help construct the new playground. The community can be a part of Voorhees history and help construct a facility that children will enjoy for years, Spellman said.
The Committee was looking for an opportunity to construct a new playground ever since the playground at Main Street had to be demolished, Spellman said. Luckily this funding will go toward the first phase of the construction of a new playground at Connolly Park, he said.
The Main Street playground was demolished after the township’s insurance company decided to not insure wooden playgrounds any longer because of the risk of injuries and splinters. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the United States Department of Labor, declared that these types of wooden playgrounds present some physical dangers and health threats.
The playground had experienced some damage through the years. Some of the support posts that held the playground up were starting to rot and deteriorate and it would most likely not have been able to be repaired.
In a previous interview, Spellman said the donor wall at the old playground — which featured a number of local residents who gave money to the township when the original playground was being built — will be preserved and installed at the new playground at Connolly Park. The bricks located at the old playground with donor names will also be transplanted to the new playground.
The new playground will not be of the wooden variety.
Interested volunteers can call the township at 429–7174 to sign up for the project. Both days will feature two four-hour shifts supervised by safety professionals.
For more information and updates as the date gets closer, please visit the township’s Web site at voorheesnj.com.
