The Bay of Naples Splash Zone, which has been added to Kade’s Playground in Herculaneum City Park, opened to no fanfare Tuesday morning, but the first families to officially use it seemed delighted with the watery play area.
“This is one of the better ones I’ve seen,” said Laura Lamar, 31, of Imperial, who brought sons Lucas, 4, and Andrew, 2, to the new dancing-water section of the all-inclusive playground. “This has all kinds of stuff, and it’s for all ages. I think it’s really great, really nice.”
Lucas and Andrew were too busy scooting from feature to feature to comment.
Their mother said she heard about the facility’s “soft opening” on Facebook.
“I’m in MOPS – Mothers of Preschoolers – at Windsor Baptist Church (in Imperial), and we’re having a play date here,” she said. “We were going to go somewhere else, but saw this on Facebook and decided to come here.”
Lexi Shy, 8, of Milwaukee, in town to visit her grandfather, Ron Shy of Herculaneum, said she was enjoying the various features that shoot water from the ground or drop water from above at the Bay of Naples.
“I like it all,” she said.
Grandpa Shy, 60, said the splash area only adds to the already elaborate Kade’s Playground.
“I think it’s awesome,” he said. “This is the first thing Lexi wants to do when she comes to visit – go to the volcano playground.”
Kade’s Playground opened in November 2015 in Herculaneum City Park along Joachim Avenue, after years of fundraising for the all-inclusive playground.
The playground has a “Mount Vesuvius” theme linked to the name Herculaneum, thus the volcano. Mount Vesuvius is near the newly completed Bay of Naples. Both the playground and splash area are open daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
It cost $735,000 to build Kade’s Playground, and the Bay of Naples Splash Zone had a $400,000 price tag, about $50,000 less than original estimates, said Herculaneum Mayor Bill Haggard.
He said the Jefferson Foundation provided a $350,000 grant that helped fund the playground and a $200,000 grant that went toward the splash area.
In addition to the grants and fundraising efforts, various skilled laborers volunteered their time to the project, Haggard said.
“There was donated labor for the plumbing, electricity, concrete,” he said.
Some work on the facility is ongoing, Haggard said.
“We’re still working on landscaping and we’re putting up some more fencing,” he said.
Organizers originally planned for the Bay of Naples to open last spring, but “problems with drainage and the surface” delayed the project, Haggard said.
He said the splash zone is expected to remain open until the beginning of October, depending on the weather.
“We’re looking at keeping it open until a fundraiser Oct. 5 (the Fall Festival Fundraiser) so people at the fundraiser can come here and see it,” Haggard said.
The Fall Festival Fundraiser is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day at Autumn Ridge Residences, 300 Autumn Ridge Drive, in Herculaneum. The event will include live music, a silent auction, a 50/50 raffle and carnival-type games.
Haggard said once the splash area closes for the season, it will reopen sometime next spring.
“I’m sure we’ll open it as soon as the weather allows,” he said. “You never know. It might be April.”
Haggard said fundraising efforts are continuing for maintenance of and upgrades to Kade’s Playground and the Bay of Naples Splash Zone.
Kade’s Playground is named for Kade Bauman, who was disabled and died in October 2011. His parents, Josh and Annette Bauman of Festus, helped establish the playground that accommodates children with special needs.