Outdoor games to be installed at Cunningham Park
Apr. 9—A playground feature built in Cunningham Park after that park was destroyed by the 2011 tornado will be be replaced with new outdoor games.
Boomtown, a wooden playset designed to look like an old-time town with wooden buildings on the west side of the park, has been cleared for the installation of new recreational features, said Paul Bloomberg, Joplin's parks and recreation director.
The Boomtown playground was donated by the "Extreme Home Makeover" crew along with volunteers during the tornado recovery effort in 2012. The crew also built seven houses in seven days in the 2300 and 2400 blocks of Connor Avenue that were donated to families displaced by the tornado.
"The playground has been a popular amenity at Cunningham Park for the past 13 years," Bloomberg said. "But wooden playsets require constant maintenance, and it had deteriorated due to weathering and the amount of use it had over the years."
He said the structure had been scheduled to be removed at some point when it became a maintenance and safety issue.
"We recognize the popularity of this structure, but it had become apparent it was to the point it was no longer fit to be used by the public and especially children," Bloomberg said.
He said the area where Boomtown had been located will be used to build two sand volleyball courts. That plan was one of a number of parks initiatives proposed and approved by Joplin voters in 2021 when the quarter-cent sales tax for parks and stormwater was approved for renewal.
There are other plans as well.
"We are also partnering with the current Leadership Joplin class to install permanent outdoor games," Bloomberg said. "During our parks master plan study (in 2020), outdoor games were listed as a potential project for several parks."
Parks crews removed the Boomtown playground and will prepare that area for the new features that are planned to be installed in May. These include two sand volleyball courts to be built next year, and funding for that is to be included in the city's 2025 budget, Bloomberg said.
"We also would like to name this new amenity the 'Boomtown Family Game Area.' We are wanting to replicate the Boomtown sign that hung on the playground and incorporate the existing signage that was inside the playground, such as Willdabeast Way, Longwell Avenue, Gabby Street Boulevard and Maiden Lane, as a nod to the previous play structure," Bloomberg said.
Residents and businesses can help. Donations for the project are being encouraged by Leadership Joplin, which is a program conducted by the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation and sponsored by local businesses to train future community leaders.
Allison Reid, who works in sports medicine for Mercy Hospital Joplin and in Southeast Kansas, is a member of the current Leadership Joplin class. She said the class helps young professionals in the community develop leadership abilities and network with other professionals. Each class of Leadership Joplin picks a community project to foster.
"We decided on some sort of permanent yard games" to do in the park, Reid said. "It fell into place because the city is planning to put yard games in other city parks."
The group is hoping to raise enough money to fund the installation of permanent yard games including a bean bag or cornhole game, permanent table tennis, horseshoe pits and a permanent chess game.
Reid said that anyone who wishes to make a donation to the project may do so through Friends of Joplin Parks and Recreation.
To get information on how to do that, call the parks department at 417-625-6750. Reid asks that the donors note that the contributions are for the Leadership Joplin project.
