Boys and Girl’s Club of Detroit Lakes to cut ribbon on new playground

Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – The Boys and Girl’s Club of Detroit Lakes is cutting the ribbon on their new $730,000 playground on Wednesday, Oct. 4.

The invite-only event will be held at Lyle Crovisier Memorial Park at the Boys and Girl’s Club off Richwood Road and about 100 afterschool Boys and Girl’s Club kids will be the first ones to try-out the new equipment during the event.

Pat Petermann, executive director of the Club, said the installers still have a couple more things to finish and they are hoping to have the barrier fence up by next Wednesday, but it’s not lost on him how excited the kids are to try out the facility’s new playground.

“It’s almost done,” said Petermann. “There are a few parts that they are waiting on to make sure it’s safe to be on in the coming week. So it won’t be open until we do the official ribbon cutting and they get all the pieces in place. The fence is going up yet, so we’ve got some work to do on that. If weather holds out, the plan is to open this thing next Wednesday and we’re all excited.”

He said they wanted to make sure everyone was able to access each piece of equipment on the new playground and opted for more agility-style items, but they also a few standard swings for playground traditionalists.

“The Wee-go-round, which is accessible to anybody, looks really cool,” said Petermann. “The balancing and agility stuff is kinda neat. The musical chimes and the other instruments that are on the side of the fence look pretty cool … there’s just a lot of room on this thing to run around, but also play on all the pieces of the playground that are in place.”

The city of Detroit Lakes contributed $175,000 toward the playground installation that included $50,000 in funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The playground will be the city’s second on Detroit Lakes’ northside with the other installed at Roosevelt Elementary.

The Boys and Girl’s Club completed the playground construction in about 3 months.

The playground will be open to the public on Saturday, Oct. 7.