After years of planning and hard work, the playground at the Alliance Recreation Center is now open.
Executive Director of the Alliance Recreation Center Mara Andersen cited the community’s efforts in helping the goal of building the playground come to fruition.
“It’s because we have a community of such kind-hearted people that we were able to take what was a terrible, dilapidated, unsafe playground and turn it into our park that it is today,” said Andersen. “Today, we can officially say our park is ready to play in.”
Andersen said the Alliance Recreation Center began fundraising in 2018.
“It was a very long process, and we definitely had a lot of challenges along the way,” Andersen said. “It started with someone had a little bit extra, and we thought, ‘well, we’ve got a project we could put this towards.’ It was $250.”
Andersen explained that the project grew spontaneously, with the ARC receiving a Black Hills Energy grant, donations from Rotary and a community challenge grant.
“From there, everything was going well in that realm, and then COVID happened,” said Andersen. “It interrupted everything, and for a long time. So, in 2021, FNBO visited us and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to help resurrect your project, and we’re going to fund you $25,000 to build this playground. The city of Alliance has the ACE revenue return program, which is when you choose ACE as your natural gas supplier, they return funds to the communities. There was no taxpayer dollars toward this, but they awarded us some of their ACE funding.”
Andersen noted that the fundraising campaign evolved into the Make More Possible annual giving campaign in 2021, which saw more than 200 donors.
“It was a long process, but the perseverance to just keep raising money, keep letting people know we have a project, and we believe in building a community-accessible playground,” Andersen said.
The playground was designed by Crouch Recreation, which sent a site supervisor to oversee the build. Andersen said that more than 30 community volunteers joined forces to build the playground over the course of two days.
Andersen noted that the total cost of the project was approximately $76,000. She explained that the new playground will benefit the community.
“Every child should have the opportunity to play,” said Andersen. “The power of play, and what it does for them socially, emotionally, even academically—it impacts the classroom when kids are able to learn. One of the things about not only adding just another playground, another opportunity to play in our community, but for all of these families who live east of Flack (Avenue), they used to have to cross a highway to access Central Park. For all of these families, now they have a park they can ride safely on the path out here and play. Providing that opportunity for everybody to play is very important, and we’re very glad to be able to do that.”
The playground is open for all community members to play on, regardless of ARC membership status.