The committee for the Lion Legacy Park project to make Durant the first city in the nation where every park is allinclusive held its first meeting recently to discuss plans for moving forward with the project.
It is a project of the Durant Lions Club and Lions Vice President Shelley Dunnam is the founder and co-chair for the project and Lions President Lynn Smith is also a co-chair.
Dunnam said that the committee is looking at contracts they need to obtain, people they need to reach out to for support and securing 501(c)(3) status.
“The Lion Legacy Project, as a whole, our goal is to make Durant the first in the nation that has every park all-inclusive,” Dunnam said. “There’s not one in the entire country that has every city park allinclusive and that’s a goal and it would be something to not only put us on the map, but it also would be something that shows that we are a resource for inclusion for these kids which I think is a really cool thing to be on the map for.”
The first park is planned at Lloyd Plyler park at South Fifth Avenue and Texas Street and it will be a park for special- needs children, according to Dunnam.
“We’re talking communication boards for the non-verbal autistic to where they’re able to communicate with other children, ADA accessible equipment for wheelchaired children like merry go rounds, things like that,” Dunnam said. “We also want the park to be fully enclosed with a fence of sorts to keep the runners (in place), autism children are typically runners. It helps keep them in the circle. So, essentially, we just want to build a space. Every kid has a right to play and we want to build a place that they are safe to do so.”
Lion Legacy Park is working with the city and Parks and Recreation Manager Ryan Brewer. Dunnam said the park is planned at the grassy end of Lloyd Plyler Park where the baseball fields are located. The timeline for the project is dependent upon when funding becomes available and Dunnam said it takes three to six months to obtain 501(c)(3) status.
“We do encourage people to reach out to us in advance and pledge their offering, tell us they want to be involved, but we can’t actually take those things in until the 501(c)(3) status is finalized, but we are currently gathering data so that we can reach out to folks when that has happened,” Dunnam said.
According to Dunnam, a matching grant is available from Play & Park Structures, the company that will be building the park.
“Dollar for dollar, everything that we bring in on sponsorships and donations, we will have matched,” Dunnam said. “So, if somebody donates $500, that’s now a $1,000 towards it.
“The people that build this park are the same ones that built our Rocket Park and they are also the same people that built the all-inclusive park that they just built in Sherman.”
Dunnam said that Sherman, working with their Lions Club, built an all-inclusive park.
“There’s a few things that we would like to add to our element but we are working with them closely to see the things that they’ve done and get some floor plans from them just to kind of help us in our groundwork working towards this goal,” Dunnam said.
The long-term goal is for every park in the city to have allinclusive playground equipment and Dunnam said the project is personal for her.
“I have a 12-year-old epileptic child who is now three and a half years seizure free, but has complications from severity of her seizures in her lifetime and so we do have some neuro diverging issues,” Dunnam said. “We have some sensory problems and things like that. She’s not autistic, but we are on a lot of the same playing field as far as sensory disorders and I just want a place to play with my kid at a park before she doesn’t want to play at a park anymore. So, I kind of take it personal and decided we were going to get a group of people and it turns out there’s a lot of people who feel the same way that I do. As a team, we’re going to help the city accomplish this goal and go forward with this as a team and not asking for this, but just going to make the project happen.”
According to Dunnam, the project at Lloyd Plyler Park is estimated to cost between $750,000 to $1 million, and the plan for the other parks is to add and update things.
“But again, with the match grant in play, we really only have to come up with half of it,” Dunnam said. “We’re even talking about doing a name walk, like a star of fame type thing where people could even sponsor a brick and put their kid’s name on it, just to make the sidewalks prettier and things like that. But, we want the entire community from a $50 donation as far we can go to be included and named into this park. We want this to be the community’s park.”
