The town of Clymer has received a grant for a kid designed, community built playground, with a design date set for March 25. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

CLYMER — An additional playground space, one set to be designed by kids and built by community members will soon be seen in the town of Clymer.

The town recently received a grant from KABOOM! and the Ralph C. Wilson Junior foundation to allow for this playground to be built, adding to the one already in existence at the town park. At the town’s March meeting, Tod Kolstee, deputy town supervisor, said work has been done on this grant application behind the scenes for a few months.

“We received notification this past month that the town of Clymer has received that grant,” Kolstee said. “So, that will be a kid designed, community built playground to be located at the town park. It’s going to be relatively fast moving.”

A design day for the playground is scheduled for March 25. A kids session will be from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Clymer Central School, and an adult session will be at the Dutch Village Restaurant that night from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

“There will be a presentation and hopefully we get a big turnout and have some people participate in the planning committee for that,” Kolstee said. “The actual building date will be sometime in early June of this year. We’re hoping to get some kids maybe from the school that might be looking for volunteer community activities for service credits or whatnot.”

Kolstee said it should be something fun for the community that will bring people together, and more information on it has been put out on the Clymer Town Clerk’s Facebook page. The first step will be having the kids do their design work and come up with two designs, with a vote and some modifications for the final design after that. Side projects as well will be included in what will be paid for by KABOOM!, who will be funding the entire thing with no set budget. The only thing the town is responsible for is soil testing, which is already underway.

“We should tell the kids to dream big then,” town council member Levi Swanson said.

The planned build days for the playground are June 4 to June 6. It was noted that the town does still have a park fund for the current park, which may need some refreshing of wood chips, and that there will need to be a decision as to where to place the new one in conjunction with the current one.

“It can’t be physically adjoining the other playground, I think for liability reasons it has to be a separate space, so we can either go farther north off of that end of the pavilion or possibly come to the south,” Kolstee said.

The possibility of a community building to be put in the park at some point will also need to be considered, so the board said it might be best to place it to the north end of the pavilion.

More information may be shared on Facebook, and Kolstee said they are trying to get the word out as much as possible and to get people to sign up for the March 25 session, to help plan for food and how many to expect. Homeschool students will also be engaged in the process, including a design PDF packet that might be sent out to them so they can participate and have their ideas included.

“We definitely want to include as many people as possible,” Kolstee said.