Aging playground equipment at the Town of Berlin’s Dr. William Henry Park will be replaced next year after the council’s approval of a manufacturer contract.
The existing playground equipment is pictured at Henry Park in Berlin.
File photo
By Tara Fischer, Staff Writer
Aging playground equipment at Berlin’s Dr. William Henry Park will be replaced next year.
At its Sept. 23 meeting, the Berlin Town Council unanimously approved a contract to replace Henry Park playground equipment with commercial playground manufacturer GameTime in care of the North Caroline-based Cunningham Recreation. The scope of the project is not to exceed $240,000. Of that, $216,000 will be funded by the Community Parks and Playground Program from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and the remaining $24,000 will be contributed by the Town of Berlin’s allocated local funds.
The $216,000 grant was part of a $2.7 million Community Parks and Playgrounds Program package that the Maryland Department of Natural Resources distributed among 18 state municipalities.
The same month that the application for the DNR grant was submitted, August 2023, the town received a bid from GameTime for the Henry Park work at $236,000. Since then, that figure has been increased to $240,000 for the playground project.
Only a part of the playground will be replaced. The purple/green play unit for ages two to five at the front section closest to Flower Street and the blue two-bay swing will remain. The portion behind that, built in 2001 and containing equipment intended for five- to 12-year-olds, will be included in the renovation project.
The old equipment will be updated with new structures that are compliant with the American Disabilities Act.
Kate Daub, Berlin’s Special Projects Coordinator, said that a project like this would typically select the contractor through a Request for Proposal (RFP) process.
However, because the town consulted with Brian Lewis from Cunningham Recreation during the Community Parks and Playground Program grant application process in August 2023 and its previous use of Omnia Partners Contract, a cooperative purchasing organization of which Cunningham is a vendor, officials feel confident to bypass the RFP procedure and award the initiative directly to GameTime c/o Cunningham Recreation.
Berlin Mayor Zack Tyndall hopes the playground equipment will be replaced by National Night Out, which will be held the first Tuesday in August next year.
“I look forward to seeing this project come to life and continuing to enhance our town’s recreational facilities,” the mayor said in a Facebook post last month.