No Carousel Fun day this year, but a Dentzel Day will happen

May 12—There won't be a Carousel Fun Day this summer, but there will be Dentzel Day on Aug. 28, the last Saturday of the month.

It won't be that different from the Fun Day, though.

"We're not having everything we've had, but we're having enough," said Linda Baldwin, the Dentzel Carousel Committee member who's organizing the event.

It was meant to be a smaller, post-pandemic event, but it keeps growing, she said at Monday's Dentzel Carousel Committee meeting.

The event will be a fundraiser.

"This is to replace a lost year," she told the committee members, referring not just the cancelled Fun Day but also cancelled private parties for the carousel.

There will be music and entertainment at the event, she said.

Baldwin noted that last Fun Day, for the 100th anniversary of the carousel in 2019, drew about 9,000 people.

The number of people attending the event has increased each year over the past few years, she said.

Also at the meeting, Logansport Parks Administrator Jan Fawley and Park Board President Dave Smith visited to improve communications between the parks department and the carousel committee.

The two wanted carousel committee members' input on changes about to happen in Riverside Park, the park that the carousel is a centerpiece for.

The improvements coming include a planned outdoor workout center, pickleball courts and new high school regulations-sized basketball courts.

The idea is to return Riverside to being a park where everyone wants to go, Smith said.

There are other possible changes still in early planning stages. The parks department is waiting until the dam on the Eel River comes out to see how it changes things, Fawley said.

Possibilities include a bigger playground moved further from the basketball courts and the older children and adults there, shelters and concessions with kayak rentals.

"It all depends on public input," Fawley said. "We're not going to do this without public input."

Reach James D. Wolf Jr. at james.wolf@pharostribune.com or 574-732-5117

Twitter @JamesDWolfJr