City Crews have been working on Steinbach's newest playground since Tuesday.

Russ Dyck, Head of Parks and Recreation for the City of Steinbach, says the new structure is going into the Hampton Village Park behind Wyndham Estates Drive. 

"It has been a project that has been on the go for a couple of years. It was initially supposed to be installed last year, but then we had delivery delays as with a lot of things and we didn’t actually get the equipment until January, and that is typically not a good time to install playgrounds in our climate so here we are installing it now in June.” 

Dyck says a lot of community involvement and fundraising helped make this playground a reality.  

“Residents were interested in establishing a playground there, so this is being done through our playground development program.” 

He notes this is a cost-sharing program between the city and residents in the area.  

As the play structure was supposed to be received last year, Dyck says his crews began preliminary work in the area in 2022. Then, last week they excavated the area for the safety surface, and installation of the play structure itself began on Tuesday. 

“We hope to finish it this week so that kids can use it on the weekend as long as the weather cooperates. A representative from the company is out as well as our staff, doing that installation, but even if the structure itself is up, if we don’t have the safety surface there it can’t really be used. We are hoping it is ready to go for the kids by the weekend.” 

Dyck says the safety surface will be a wood fibre product that is specifically produced for playgrounds. He notes it is a little better for accessibility than the pea-stones used in older playgrounds.  

The Hampton Village neighbourhood has many young families, and Dyck notes he is sure they will really enjoy this beautiful new playground. 

“The structure itself, there will be some swings, there will be an accessible swing on there as well as a toddler swing and some regular seats. Then, your typical climber structure with a couple of slides, there will be a spider web climber, a couple of individual teeter totters and spring seats, and there is one unit with some panels that kids can be creative on.”