HARLINGEN — Even the city’s smallest parks aren’t going unnoticed.
Little Hunter Park on Third Street could be in line for some much-needed love from the Parks and Recreation Department — if money is available via the city’s Community Development Division from the Community Development Block Grant money pool.
“The playground was put in back in 2001, and it’s in dire straits,” Javier Mendez, the city’s director of parks and rec told the department’s board yesterday. “It needs to be either repaired or replaced … there are three options we are presenting to them.”
Hunter Park is probably best known as the city park that burned several years ago. These days it consists of a small tower with two slides next to a row of about 10 swings.
“On some of the decks the surfacing is coming off, that PVC coating, and so it’s starting to come off and we can see the rust — that’s pretty dangerous,” Mendez said.
“My idea is to replace the large playground, move this swing set over here to the end because what happens when you have kids running back and forth in front of that swing, it’s very dangerous,” he added.
Mendez ran down the three proposals he has forwarded to the Community Development Division.
The first, with a price tag of $120,000 is the most ambitious.
Mendez said it would replace the rusting slides with a mega-tower consisting of several slides, a reflex device kind of like a multi-child teeter-totter, and a web crawl and a Jax web, both of which feature climbing ropes.
“That’s my idea and this whole, entire project would be $120,000, including sidewalks, including the fence in the front separating the parking lot from the playground,” he said, adding that a curb would be installed around the playground and the soft-fall wood fiber would be replenished.
The second option was to again add a mega-tower, put a sidewalk around the playground and add a fence, all at an estimated cost of $92,000.
Option No. Three is the cheapest, at $36,000, which would replace the decking on the current tower, replace the two slides and add a fence.
It is not known when the Community Development Division would take up the proposals.
Hunter Park
Location — Intersection of 3rd Street and McGregor Street
Amenities — Two acres, playground, covered picnic shelter
