After a monthslong saga over the Savage Park splash pad, the city of Toledo has taken the first step of its official plan to redo the splash pad entirely.
Councilman Vanice Williams will present an ordinance at Wednesday’s Toledo City Council meeting authorizing Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz to enter into a contract for the design of a new Savage Park splash pad.
The ordinance will permit the expenditure of up to $150,000 from the Capital Improvement Fund.
“It is an excellent proposal,” Councilman Cerssandra McPherson said. “I don’t know how much it will cost to redesign and redevelop the splash pad, but it’s needed and necessary.”
The city’s commitment to revamping the Savage Park splash pad comes after a monthslong period of neighborhood outrage regarding the splash pad’s closure.
For Roshawn Jones, a community member and the owner of Soul City Boxing, the prospect of a new splash pad is promising. Soul City Boxing runs a summer program for local youth, and Mr. Jones usually takes the children to the splash pad every day after lunch.
A renovation of the two-decade-old pad “would be great for the community,” Mr. Jones said. However, before getting too excited, he wants to know the specifics of the future renovation.
“It all depends on what they are going to do for the splash pad — what they’re going to upgrade,” Mr. Jones said, noting the whole park could use renovations.
Ms. McPherson agrees that the splash pad is one element of a greater project: the park needs to be revitalized and actively attended to. The abandoned pool on the property needs to be addressed, said Ms. McPherson.
Although the city is still in the primary phase of redesigning the splash pad, Mr. Jones is glad to see local leaders taking initiative and paying attention to the needs of local children.
“I’m very happy that they’re being proactive,” Mr. Jones said. “It shows that the people do have a voice in the community, and that the city does care about the people. The mayor is doing a great job.”
Ms. McPherson is less impressed with the city’s responsiveness.
“Being proactive? No, I don’t think it’s being proactive,” Ms. McPherson said. “I think it’s bringing resolution to something that should have happened last year.”
In May, 2023, the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department reported that the splash pad was noncompliant with state regulations. The water pressure coming out of the nozzles was too high, which violated Makenna’s Law.
The law — a piece of Ohio legislation that regulates water pressure at splash pads, pools, and waterparks — was put into place after Kim Manion’s 7-year-old daughter, Makenna, was severely injured by a water park element in 2019 in the Cincinnati area.
Despite having ample time to address the splash pad, the city did not hold meetings to rectify the issue for a full year. The neighborhood children passed June’s 90-plus degree heat wave with no nearby place to cool off.
After multiple attempts by the Parks and Youth Services Department to modify the splash pad’s water pressure and prove it was compliant with the Health Department’s code, the splash pad finally reopened on July 2 .
In 2023, Parks and Youth Services applied for the federal Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Grant with the hopes of renovating the Savage Park splash pad. The government asked the city to further investigate whether the park structures were eligible for the historic registry and reapply for 2024.
The city will learn whether it receives the grant in November, Mayor Kapszukiewicz says.
“For almost two years now we’ve been working toward replacing that splash pad,” said Joe Fausnaugh, the director of Parks and Youth Services. “Given the issues we had with the splash pad recently, the mayor didn’t want to have the future of the splash pad hanging in the balance of a grant, so he asked if he reallocated some of the American Rescue Plan money, if I could get the project done sooner.”
The mayor’s choice to move forward with an ordinance doesn’t mean the grant is an impossibility, though. In fact, Mr. Fausnaugh’s team is confident Toledo will get the grant.
“We still think we have an excellent chance of getting this grant,” Mayor Kapszukiewicz said. “However, we won’t know about that until November, so we have decided to move forward with an ordinance to guarantee that the Savage Park splash pad gets redone one way or another.”
The city of Toledo’s Parks and Youth Services is currently engaged with an architectural and engineering firm called Brandstetter Carroll Inc., Mr. Fausnaugh said. The firm is helping upgrade the Jamie Farr pool; Mr. Fausnaugh hopes that after the council votes on Wednesday’s ordinance, Parks and Youth Services will be able to continue its partnership with the firm as it remodels the splash pad.
Parks and Youth Services will have a kickoff meeting with Brandstetter Carroll Inc. in early August, Mr. Fausnaugh said. Generally, the company takes about a month to come up with design concepts. Once the city has preliminary designs, it will share them with the neighborhood to get feedback.
“If everything goes well — we get strong public support — we could potentially bid this out before the end of the year, with construction happening in the spring,” Mr. Fausnaugh said.
Working on the splash pad opens an avenue to begin rectifying previous neglect.
“Junction neighborhood hasn’t been invested in historically the way it should have been,” Mr. Fausnaugh said.
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