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Chattanooga’s Southside Community Park gets $50,000 grant for children’s play area

Staff photo by Ben Benton / Ivan Kinamore, right, pulls out the end of an inflatable bounce house as his son, Keon, watches it inflate at Southside Community Park in Chattanooga's Alton Park community. The park recently received a $50,000 grant from Washington, D.C.-based The Trust for Public Land, in partnership with L.L. Bean, for a children's play area.
Staff photo by Ben Benton / Ivan Kinamore, right, pulls out the end of an inflatable bounce house as his son, Keon, watches it inflate at Southside Community Park in Chattanooga's Alton Park community. The park recently received a $50,000 grant from Washington, D.C.-based The Trust for Public Land, in partnership with L.L. Bean, for a children's play area. Staff photo by Ben Benton / Ivan Kinamore, right, pulls out the end of an inflatable bounce house as his son, Keon, watches it inflate at Southside Community Park in Chattanooga's Alton Park community. The park recently received a $50,000 grant from Washington, D.C.-based The Trust for Public Land, in partnership with L.L. Bean, for a children's play area.

By Ben Benton 3 min read

The Alton Park community’s Southside Community Park got a $50,000 grant from the Washington, D.C.-based Trust for Public Land for the construction of a play area for children.

The grant is part of a $1 million investment by L.L. Bean in a joint effort with the trust to provide funding for community park improvements across the country, according to a statement from trust officials.

“In Chattanooga, this grant will provide the final funding needed to construct a play area in Southside Community Park that the Alton Park community desperately needs to give residents a welcoming place to play and be active,” said Rebecca Bullis, spokesperson for the trust.

The five-acre Southside Community Park on Central Avenue was opened in 2017 by the city of Chattanooga in the Alton Park neighborhood, trust officials said, but funding will help to add a distinctive playground designed by the neighborhood’s youth to give the community a welcoming place to play and be active.

Trust officials said Alton Park’s history of environmental injustice, with soil contamination persisting in much of the neighborhood today, has been both a barrier to outdoor engagement and an impetus for advocacy.