More playgrounds with ‘wow factor’ in the works for Burnaby

The city’s playgrounds will soon be seeing some upgrades, as funding to enhance these sites was approved by city council last week.

So what will these enhancements look like?

Essentially, the city is looking to make playgrounds more engaging and fun for visitors of all ages, with the addition of fitness areas, water play structures, and bigger play structures such as slides and climbing features, at some locations.

The details

There are three tiers of playgrounds the city has outlined for improvement.

The first is the basic playground, with a proposed allocated budget of $300,000. This type of playground serves the neighbourhood and is typically a 15-minute walking distance from homes and centres around basic play opportunities.

The second type of site is the enhanced playground, which includes various accessible play areas with a range of equipment. These sites have a proposed budget of $750,000. Enhanced playgrounds are intended to serve a larger district/ area and are usually located in district parks.

The third site is the destination playground, which would have a proposed budget of $3,500,000. These types of playgrounds are usually located in district or major park complexes and would be considered “city-wide attractions.”

The city has 85 playgrounds dispersed through 164 parks in the city.

Currently, Burnaby replaces three basic playgrounds each year with a budget of $185,000 per site, meaning a playground usually gets placed once every 28 years.

“Over time, the purchasing power of $185,000 has declined by 60%. Inflation and thecost of materials goes up and the structures get smaller and less inviting aspurchasing power goes down,” noted staff in a report.

The city is looking to improve its playground renewal timeline to replace these structures every 15 to 20 years and it is looking to increase the replacement budget to $300,000, allowing for four basic playground replacements per year.

The financial breakdown

The city report noted there would be two streams of funding that would be allocated to playground enhancement.

The first would be used to continue replacing the basic playgrounds (this stream would see an increase to four site enhancements per year, and increase the budget from $185,000 to $300,000 per site).

The second stream would be used to create enhanced and destination playgrounds. The timeline for these projects would alternate and there would be $750,000 of funding allocated for enhanced sites and $3,500,000 for destination sites.

The city also said the impact of increasing playground replacement would require the addition of a full-time playground program coordinator. The position would be included in the 2024 budget considerations.

In 2023, the city is looking to replace four basic playground sites at Eastburn Park, Burnaby Lake Park, Harbourview Park and Sumas Park.

Planning and design work would begin for an enhanced site at Maywood Park and an destination site potentially located at Central Park.