VILLAGE OF LIVERPOOL – At a special meeting on Monday, March 25, the Village of Liverpool Board of Trustees – Mayor Stacy Finney and trustees Rachel Ciotti and Mike LaMontagne – unanimously approved the village’s application for a $50,000 Onondaga County Community Development Block Grant to help fund the phase two renovation of a children’s playground at Heid Park.
Heid Park is the small, triangle-shaped park bounded by Balsam, Birch and Sixth streets, a block west of Oswego Street.
If the grant is awarded, the village would pay $39,490, its share of the $83,490 project.
The trustees conducted public hearings regarding the block grant request and also its publication of the village’s Five-Year Consolidated Plan for Capital Improvement Projects. However, no members of the public attended the special 4 p.m. meeting. Trustees Melissa Cassidy and Matt Devendorf were absent.
Phase one of the playground project completed last fall replaced outdated equipment with a new swing set and a “generation” swing that allows riders to face each other. Hardened pathways and benches were also added.
Phase two calls for the installation of several inventive items including a sight-n-sound interactive panel, magic ball-popper, chime panel, lucky the ladybug spring rider and a sensory garden wall.
Two small shelters with benches and trash receptacles will also be added, but the project’s most ambitious element is the proposed creation of a rain garden located on the park’s southern end. Utilizing green technology, the rain garden should assist with park drainage and to capture new runoff from the resurfaced play area.
A future capital project, phase three of the playground makeover, will likely add a large, 16-square-feet covered shelter with picnic tables. Other anticipated projects listed in the village’s Five-Year Consolidated Plan for Capital Improvement Projects include First Street and Birch Street sidewalks, and First Street, Salina Street and Pearl Street streetscape improvements.
