Partnership for play: New playground installed at San Angelo's Bell Park

A new playground has been installed at San Angelo's Bell Park that was funded by the Alcohol & Drug Awareness Center for the Concho Valley.

A ribbon cutting was held Monday in honor of the park's completion at 515 Lowrie Ave.

The playground was installed by city parks crews and funded by the Alcohol & Drug Awareness Center for the Concho Valley with a $188,000 grant from the Texas Health and Human Services.

The grant was used to fund Bell Park and Mountainview Park at 3031 Freeland Ave, which is set to be completed in the fall.

"Our mission is to save lives and create healthier communities; one of the ways we do that is by partnering with the stakeholders in our community who share our mindset of making places for the children and families to live, play and have fun in a way that's drug and alcohol free," Eric Sanchez, CEO of ADACCV said on Monday.

Sanchez thanked the city for partnering with them on the project and the ADACCV team for their work.

Harry Thomas, a City Council member, was also in attendance along with other members of the community.

"Partnerships are the key to success for many projects the city does," Thomas said. "When we were presented this particular opportunity several months ago, all of the council was aboard. This particular park would probably not have playground equipment for several years because it's not in the parks budget."

Walt Koenig, Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, said it was a beautiful day to celebrate the new park in San Angelo.

"We, as a community, invest in our community to make sure we have those things that makes us great in terms of our quality of life," Koenig said. "This is certainly just another example of where the public and the private partnerships occur in order to make all this happen."

This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: New playground installed at San Angelo's Bell Park, funded by ADACCV