Hoover celebrates grand opening for $2 million inclusive playground at Met Complex

After years of planning and raising money and months of building, the city of Hoover today officially opened its new $2 million Explore playground at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex.

The 15,000-square-foot playground has a universal design, meaning it is designed to meet the needs of all people, including those with a variety of disabilities and mobility issues.

The playground includes a 17-foot-tall clubhouse, active and musical play areas, a variety of swings and slides, textures, bright colors, sensory components for people with sight and hearing impairments, and a TV display to encourage seek-and-find activities throughout the playground.

It’s designed so that children with disabilities can play right alongside other children without disabilities and so that parents with disabilities can have access to play with their children as well. It also includes a family restroom equipped with a changing table big enough for adults who need assistance.

A 7,000-square-foot splash pad right next to the playground also is fully inclusive and should open on May 15 after some “bugs” are worked out, said Dee Nance, a community services officer for the city who led the playground design and fundraising.

The playground and splash pad are between the Hoover RV Park and the five multi-purpose fields for sports such as football, soccer, lacrosse and rugby.

Several hundred adults and children came out for today’s grand opening celebration.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said previous city leaders already had planned a playground at the Hoover Met Complex that would be accessible to people with mobility issues. But Dustin Chandler, a Hoover parent who has a daughter with a disability, encouraged the mayor to go beyond the norm and seek input from organizations that specialize in disabilities to design something even more inclusive.

Brocato brought Nance, a Hoover parks and recreation superintendent with a degree in therapeutic recreation, onto his staff as a community service officer and asked her to take on this project and shepherd it to completion. She traveled the Southeast, visiting different organizations that specialize in disabilities, and talked with Birmingham area groups as well, to come up with a better design.

The cost of the project mushroomed from about $750,000 to about $2 million, but Nance, because of her passion for it, successfully found community partners to assist, Brocato said.

State legislators, county commissioners, businesses and foundations made generous donations to make the project a reality, he said.

Because of its unique features, the new playground will attract people not just from the Birmingham-Hoover metro area, but from across the state, Brocato said.

“We’re excited about it,” he said. “This is a playground for everyone. It’s open to everyone in the state. It’s free.”

City Administrator Allan Rice said a post the city put on Facebook announcing the playground back in September has been seen more than 60,000 times and shared 636 times.

Kelly Bonner, a Hoover resident who is the project coordinator of training and education for the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability, said this playground will literally change life for her family.

Her husband uses a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury, and this project will allow him to bring his daughter to a playground by himself and interact with her while she plays.

The Americans with Disabilities Act is a great law designed to guarantee people with disabilities access to places, but it’s limited in scope, Bonner said. This playground goes beyond that, she said.

Mary White, a Hoover High School senior with a disability, said she had braces on her legs when she was little and had trouble going to playgrounds with her walker. She wishes she had a playground this cool when she was younger, she said.

Erica Bowen, the mother of a 4-year-old girl who uses a wheelchair, said she and her family just moved to Hoover two months ago, but she has been very impressed with the attention that school and city officials pay to the different needs that people have. She thinks this playground is amazing.

“I feel like there is definitely a need for accessible playgrounds for typical and non-typical developing kids to play,” Bowen said.

Her family has been to other playgrounds accessible to children in wheelchairs, but usually those playgrounds have only one section with such accommodations and limited options for play.

“Just because you have wheels doesn’t mean you don’t want to do the things the other kids do,” she said.

The new Explore playground at the Hoover Met Complex has a massive amount of options, and it allows her 4-year-old daughter to play right with her 6-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, she said.

Her family saw a similar playground when they lived in Arizona, but it was about 30 percent the size of this one, she said.

Spencer Cheak of the Gametime company that manufactured and installed the playground said Hoover’s Explore playground has been designated as a national demonstration site for his company because of its excellence in being inclusive, providing opportunities for physical fitness and including nature in its design.

In addition to funding from the city of Hoover, donors who contributed to the Explore playground include: state senators Jabo Waggoner, Cam Ward, Greg Reed and Dan Roberts; state representatives David Faulkner, Arnold Mooney, Jack Williams and Allen Farley; Jefferson County Commission President Jimmie Stephens; former Jefferson County Commissioner David Carrington; Shelby County Commission; Alabama Power Foundation; Alabama Power Co. Employee Credit Union; Barber Companies; The Caring Foundation of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama; Carly’s Clubhouse Inc.; CAWACO Resource Conservation and Development Council; Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham; Hoover Parks and Recreation Foundation; Iberia Bank; J.A. Dawson Co.; Junior League of Birmingham; Mark Parnell; Regions Bank; Southern Nuclear; and The Thompson Foundation.

J.A. Dawson served as the project manager for the playground, while Brasfield & Gorrie was the construction manager for the Hoover Met Complex and Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood was the architectural firm for the complex.