The city of Red Bank is replacing the playground at Kids Korner Park, though construction probably won't begin until December.
Public Works Director Tim Thornbury said the new playground will be all wood, like the current playground, aside from slides and metal railings. The current playground at the corner of Redding Road and Unaka Street was built 20-23 years ago, making it one of the city's oldest playgrounds, Thornbury said, and the wood is beginning to splinter. Over the years the city has performed maintenance such as cleaning, sealing and staining, but anything made from wood will eventually start to rot, he said.
"It's served its life," Thornbury said of the current playground. "It's time for the city to replace it and upgrade it to ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] standards."
The material selected for the new playground is from TimberForm, which uses a tight-grained wood that would not need to be sealed or stained annually, said Thornbury. New swing sets and picnic tables will be constructed in the park from the same wood.
"It's almost like an engineered wood," said City Manager Randall Smith. "It looks so good that it looks fake, but it's not."
Thornbury said he'd spoken with someone in New York City who'd used TimberForm material for a playground built 20 years ago, who told him that only one part had had to be replaced since.
The bid proposal for the playground's construction should be ready in a few weeks, at which point the project will be open for bidding for the following 15 days. The winning bid will likely go before the city commissioners for approval in August or early September, he said.
The city plans to leave the existing playground up as long as possible, said Smith, adding it will take 90 days for the materials to be cut once they're ordered, plus additional time for them to be shipped.
"It will be a completely new site when we're done," Thornbury said, though there is one thing that will stay the same.
The outside fence with the hand prints from when the playground was first built will remain, said Thornbury, who's already heard from some citizens who were concerned that the hand prints might come down.
Once a final bid is approved, construction on the project can begin, though City Recorder Ruthie Rohen said the city would like to wait until after its Christmas festival Dec. 2, when the playground is used less often.