Project Completion Is Near: Bring On The Shade!

The Friends of the Soda Springs City Park have been busy gathering support to complete their fundraising for the shade covers project that will provide shade over both existing swing sets at the Caribou CommUNITY Playground next month.

Installation of the metal shade structures was completed last week so Blaze Sign is now working to finalize the customized measurements of the shade canopies. Their team came to the playground last Wednesday to install one canopy temporarily to see how it fit, and they determined that the design and sizing needed to be modified slightly to ensure there will be no sagging of the shade canopies, and that they are pulled nice and tight once they’re finally installed.

Once the shade canopies are created by seamstresses, the Blaze Sign team will be charged with installing thousands of grommets on the borders of all the canopies so that carabiners can be used to attach them to the metal shade structures on top of the swing sets. They aim to have this completed by the end of the month.

Some major donations were received recently from the following companies: Advantage Plus Federal Credit Union ($5,000), Bingham Healthcare ($1,000), and Zachry ($500.) The Friends and the community are so grateful to these groups for supporting area youth through these charitable donations.

Brent Neibaur, President of Advantage Plus Credit Union and Bancroft native, and Brian Riley, a local loan officer with APFCU, both championed the company’s support of this project. APFCU's local credit union branch in Soda Springs sits directly across the highway from the playground, and their team wanted to make a significant dent in the fundraising goal with their donation, which they did!

The Friends would like to invite the public to their annual Maintenance Day which is being held at the playground on Thursday, May 1st at 6 PM. All volunteers will be working to clean up leaves, sticks and garbage that are in or around the playground, clearing out any existing wasps nests, removing vandalism found on equipment, repairing a case of vandalism that was recently done to the green slide in the tot-lot, replacing old signage with new signage, replacing broken swing restraints on the all abilities swings with new ones, and other projects deemed necessary by The Friends. The Lions Club has generously offered to support the Maintenance Day again through volunteerism as well as supplying dinner afterwards for the project's volunteers.

Four BBQ grills will be installed and set in concrete by the City’s Parks and Rec Department in the grassy areas surrounding the playground in the coming weeks, so start planning your Summer BBQ’s and birthday parties at the playground!