Fayette is one step closer to having a splash park. The ad hoc committee in charge of making the proposed water recreation site a reality in the Fayette city park met with members of SWT Design, Hydro Dramatics, and Ideal Landscape Group on Thursday, April 15, to kickstart the design process.

The committee hopes the splash park will be open by August 2 of this year. 

The location will be directly south of the Historic Fayette Memorial Pool at the park, near the corner of Park Road and Landers Memorial Drive. It will have an ADA-compliant sidewalk and its own shelter house that will look down over Lembke Field.

Exactly what equipment the splash park will feature is still in consideration. Members indicated the desire to have separated sections for small and large children and asked to make the overall shape more like a figure 8 than a rectangle.

The committee set a budget of around $275,000, all of which has been pledged to the park by various donors in the community. Longtime Fayette resident and businesswoman Lucile Thurman, who passed away on June 4, 2020, left $150,000 in her estate for the splash park. She also left another $25,000 so to build a memorial bench and plant a dogwood tree near the splash park. Early on an anonymous donor pledged $75,000 for the construction of the splash park.

A large cost associated with the splash park will be the recirculation system, which the committee specified must be in place. Without that system, any water used would pass directly through the drains and into the sewers. An average usage rate of 200 gallons of water per minute would cost the city around $66 an hour, and up to $70,000 a year.

The committee also insisted that the park allow for wheelchair access and that the construction phase use as many local contractors as possible. 

Another design workshop and committee meeting will take place in the coming weeks. Construction could begin as early as June 16.