Last weekend, the Village of Floral Park held a grand opening ceremony for Tiny Town—the only village-managed playground in Floral Park, which faced a major renovation this past year.
The popular 13,000-square-foot-playground, which is located in the Floral Park Recreation Center near the corner of Bergen Street and Fuller Avenue, was last updated in 2000. According to village officials, the playground renovation became a reality after the village removed a 100-year-old diseased willow tree in 2016 that often gave shade to the many children and parents who frequented the playground during the hot summer months. The village broke ground on the new playground in October of last year.
Tiny Town, which cost the village approximately $480,000 to renovate, was originally scheduled to open last Memorial Day, but due to rejected contracting bids that were too high, the renovation was postponed. New features of the playground now include various new playground equipment, a swing set, a drinking fountain and canopy shadings that are attached to the playground equipment.
Tiny Town also has new surfacing. The old playground’s surface was covered in Fibar, which was similar to wood chips and had to be replaced every two to three years. The Fibar became too expensive for the village to maintain and was replaced with synthetic turf and padding—a welcomed change by residents.
Before the ceremonial ribbon cutting, trustee Frank Chiara thanked the crowd for coming out to show their support.
“This is a great event for us opening up this park, which is a fantastic thing,” said Chiara. “We worked on it for a long period of time and we had a lot of people involved, and I’d just like to recognize everybody that was involved from the inception to the completion.”
Chiara thanked architect Rob Retenauer who put Tiny Town together and helped the village design the park as well as TurfTek, who was the village’s construction team.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better construction team,” said Chiara. “They were so cooperative with us. We worked together and we ironed out a couple of glitches that had to be ironed out. The construction went out with no hitches. The weather delayed us for a bit, but we worked right through that. They did a fantastic job.”
Chiara also thanked mayor Dominick Longobardi, the rest of the village board and Superintendent of Recreation Kurt Meyfohrt among others.
“[Tiny Town] came off fantastic,” said Chiara. “It is a showcase and we’re hoping it’s going to be here for generations to come and all our children can enjoy it, and our grandchildren can enjoy it.”
The grand opening ribbon was held and cut by the young playground-goers from the village to thunderous applause.
