A Turlock park will soon be home to brand new playground equipment, thanks to a matching grant awarded to the City as part of the Healthy Play Initiative.

The City of Turlock applied for and received grants to help fund new playground equipment at three parks — Summerfaire Park, Rotary Park and Montana Park. At this time, however, Summerfaire Park is the only park that has matching funds budgeted.

“We have a couple of playgrounds that are at a stage in their useful life where we can no longer find replacement parts for them because the systems have changed so significantly,” said Turlock Recreation and Facilities Director Allison Van Guilder at the March 13 City Council meeting. “It has been staff’s goal over the past few years to really work hard to come up with some funding strategies so we can look for ways to replace this equipment. We were given an opportunity to participate in a grant program through the Game Time Healthy Play Initiative — this is in conjunction with the California Parks and Recreation Society —where we applied for actually three different locations and were successful in receiving all three of them.”

The Turlock City Council voted on March 13 to accept the grant in the amount of $30,874.50 and will use $48,693 in budgeted funds to install the new equipment.

Summerfaire Park, located at N. Soderquist and Fulkerth roads, opened in 1994 and the playground equipment was installed there in 1995. The 23-year-old equipment will soon be replaced with a new play unit, swings and safety surfacing from Game Time.

Van Guilder said children in the City’s after school programs were able to help with the design of the new playground equipment by voting on the color scheme and the amenities. The color scheme that received the most votes was bright green and light brown.