Kids in the Nadel Drive neighborhood off Middle Road have a new playground to enjoy.
Town officials and two longtime neighborhood residents cut the ribbon on the new playground dubbed “Nadel Park” Tuesday afternoon.
It was built at a cost of $97,000, half of which was paid with grant funds and the other half matched by the town’s recreation fees. Those fees are paid by developers on a per-lot or per-unit basis.
“For many years, there was nothing here but a backstop,” said neighborhood resident Joan Davis. She and her husband Forrest have lived in a house adjacent to the park since the 1970s.
“The kids used to play baseball back here,” she said. “One year we had the whole Riverhead High School football team back here, when our son was on the team.” More recently, the large open field drew crowds of young men who played soccer there. “They would come from everywhere,” she said. The lack of bathroom facilities there was a problem, she said.
“This is more like a pocket park,” Riverhead Councilman George Gabrielsen said. “It’s a playground for neighborhood children.” It is accessible by a walkway from Joyce Drive. Many of the homes in the subdivision were built in the early 1960s.
The playground surface — a thick, soft bonded rubber material — is expensive to install but requires no maintenance unlike other surfaces, said Riverhead recreation superintendent Raymond Coyne. Over a decade mulch replacement can cost many tens of thousands of dollars, Coyne said. The padded rubber suface is safer for kids, too, he said.
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