Sidney Park Project set to open August 2nd

SIDNEY, Neb. — After exceeding the fundraising goal of $711,000 in under a year, the new Sidney park will be opening early next month. 

The Sidney Park Project pushed back its original opening date of July 4th to Tuesday, August 2^nd at 8:00 a.m. Construction Coordinator Jeremy Lee said the biggest challenges the project faced were weather and supply chain related.

“Fundraising went awesome," Lee said. "We raised quite a bit in such a short amount of time. Dealing with those delays with the contractor is probably our biggest issue, but they came in, rocked it, and got out faster than they thought they were going to.”

Lee said local contractors helped the team out by donating equipment he used to get the playground up sooner without a higher cost. With the extra help and donations, the Sidney Park Project team exceeded their fundraising goal and is able to pave the parking lot to allow handicap-accessible parking.

“That was something we didn’t know if we could fund in our original dream, and so now that we’ve been able to fundraise a little bit over, and work with some local contractors who have helped us out, we are able to pave and apply concrete to this area and do handicap parking," Sidney Park Project Vice President Ally Benzel said.

Benzel said the mini-city part of the playground took 130 labor hours by itself. 

“It’s really intricate," Benzel said. "It has a lot of pieces, puzzle pieces, music pieces, and that took a while to put together.”

Benzel said the playground coloring was chosen for people who may struggle with too much color.

“There’s not a ton of color because that can be visually overwhelming for somebody with a sensory processing disorder.”

Benzel said in the next week they will be laying down the last part of the park, which Lee called one of the biggest parts of their budgeting.