After five months of delays, the new Windsor Park playground in Oak Bay could soon be swarming with children once again.
Originally slated to open last October, the play area, which boasts a merry-go-round, slide and climbing wall, will likely be ready this week, according to Oak Bay’s parks services manager Chris Hyde-Lay.
“It's been awkward for us, and it's been certainly disappointing to the community, but I think that we are almost there,” he said.
At a council meeting on July 8, 2024, Oak Bay awarded a contract to Canadian Recreation Solutions to replace the aging Transit Road playground. The Alberta-based company soon supplied Oak Bay with preliminary designs, and residents voted on their favourite. The Oak Bay Parks department began the removal of the existing playground in September and excavated the site for the contractor hired to install the new play area. But when construction began, the project started to go downhill.
“A contractor was hired to do the installation that essentially was inexperienced. We didn't know that,” said Hyde-Lay. “We thought that the contractor, because they came with the company, would know what they were doing.”
Various pieces of playground equipment were installed incorrectly. The merry-go-round, for example, was positioned too close to a swing set, and a gap big enough to entrap a child's leg was left at the top of a set of stairs.
“We couldn't approve it because we have a pretty strict set of Canadian safety standards that we have to follow,” said the parks services manager.
Fixing the contractor’s mistakes turned out to be a time-consuming process – one that required five or six new parts, some of which had to travel from abroad. One piece of the merry-go-round proved particularly tricky to replace.
“It couldn't be removed and replaced because it was underneath the poured-in-place rubber, buried in cement, so it had to be reordered,” said Hyde-Lay. “All of the gravel had to come out ... and then wood chips have to be added.”
Because Canadian Recreation Solutions hired the contractor, it covered the cost of the new parts and additional labour, and the new contractor is now installing the playground equipment.
Moving forward, Oak Bay will vet contractors, not just developers, to avoid situations like this one, according to Hyde-Lay.
“I'd like to apologize to the community,” he said. “I want to thank them for their patience because it's been a long, arduous process.”
