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Crosier Park playground celebrated
The Hastings community celebrated its inclusive playground on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 16.
The Hastings Community Foundation and the City of Hastings Parks & Recreation Department organized a ribbon cutting for the Crosier Park playground at 13th Street and Pine Avenue.
The playground provides a sensory-rich environment that enables children of all abilities to engage physically and socially in a supportive environment. It includes slides, swings, climbing features, interactive spinners and roller tables, accessible ramps and interactive music features. The playground is ideal for children ages 0-12.
The Hastings Parks and Recreation Department and the Hastings Community Foundation announced in October 2020 a coordinated effort to build the inclusive playground at Crosier Park. The playground opened to the public in October 2021. A prefabricated restroom building with timed locks that go into effect when the park closes for the night and a shelter opened in June 2022.
The $850,000 project was funded with $700,000 from the Parks and Recreation Department’s sales tax fund and $100,000 from the Hastings Community Foundation’s Key Society. Additional funding support for the Crosier Park project came from the John Harrington family, the Jackie Ortegren family, the Danny Russell family and Hastings Noon Rotary.
“Through the design phase we saw a number of different play features,” said Jeff Hassenstab, Hastings Parks and Recreation Director. “Knowing that we couldn’t afford all of them, we started to reach out to community groups and private donors. This is when the Key Society group came in. With their donation we were able to include the shade sails you see hanging today. We quickly learned that the shade was very important because there are a number of children that have difficulty tolerating the Nebraska heat. Again, our mission was to design something for all.”
The Key Society is made up of families, individuals and businesses who care about the Hastings community and pay an annual membership cost of $250. Those funds support projects that better the quality of life in the Hastings community. The Key Society has contributed nearly $500,000 toward projects in the Hastings community, including other parks projects such as the Libs Park splash pad and Lincoln Park pavilion.
“We had known, heard about an inclusive playground happening and we were fortunate enough to hear your vision, see your plans,” said Dan Peters, Executive Director of the Hastings Community Foundation. “If you’ve ever seen a great idea on paper, this was it. This was absolutely an amazing facility. Our question to Jeff and Parks and Rec was simple. We like it. What could you do with $100,000 more?”
The $850,000 represents the cost of the playground equipment, but also parking stalls as well as the restroom.
Also during the celebration, Sydney Norton, speech pathologist at RiteCare Clinic Hastings MMI, announced that a 70-inch by 19-inch communications board, funded by the Key Society, will be added to the park. Norton and her colleagues wrote the grant for the board.
“Children with speech-language disorders can come and tell their family ‘I’m hurt, I have to go potty, I made a new friend,’ and they can really dive into those social, emotional communication opportunities that a park gives a child,” Norton said.
The communications board, oriented for children, will bring an effective communication method, a post-mounted low-technology communication board, to the Hastings Community. Although the playground currently has a sign with some American Sign Language and various other visual aids, it does not contain a viable communication method for children who are minimally or non-speaking and are in need of a way to communicate their wants and needs during play. Vocabulary on the board will be customized by RiteCare Speech-Language Pathologists with appropriate symbols and vocabulary to meet children’s communication needs on a playground.
Published Date: 05/16/2023