County playgrounds now open, get daily ‘bath’

Mike DonilaOur Town Outdoors

Last week, we announced the locations of four new dog parks that the Knox County Parks and Recreation Department plans to build during the next couple of years.

The small parks will be funded under a grant program initiated by the Boyd Family Foundation, which is founded by Randy and Jenny Boyd.

This week, we’re happy to announce that a fifth dog park will be built at Clayton Park in Halls. We should know more in the coming weeks and months about when crews will break ground and just how the parks will look.

In other news, the department purchased state-of-the-art backpack and hand-held sanitizer sprayers and each day crews hit the playgrounds – which are now open to the public – and wash them down.

Other crews this week spent some time repairing lights throughout the parks system, including some at the ballfields at Carter Park and all the ones at Concord Park. They also did a ton of mowing!

The concessions stand at John Tarleton Park now has newly installed countertops and cabinets; a dead tree was removed from Tank Strickland Park; and the boat docks at Concord Park look a lot better after our carpenters made some repairs to them.

Also, our staff has begun planning for the Holiday Festival of Lights at the Cove at Concord Park. We plan to kick it off on Tuesday, Dec. 1, and run it through the entire month!

I received the following from the Engineering and Public Works Department:

Several crews have been split up to assist other districts with general maintenance (i.e. pothole patching, mowing, etc.). We don’t include general maintenance tasks in the weekly update since they are on-going week in and week out.

However, crews did do the following:

  • Barnard Road re-alignment project continues
  • Silent Springs sidewalk repair and stabilization

Mike Donila is communications director for Knox County government.

 

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