PORT ANGELES – Efforts to build a new “Dream Playground” in Port Angeles are well underway.

Organizers of the effort say they’re currently fundraising, trying to raise about $400,000 needed to put in the playground.

Steve Methner is president of the Port Angeles Dream Playground Foundation. He says the new playground will cost more than double what the old one did, mainly because of a new rubber safety base that will be used instead of wood chips.

As much as we grimace about the cost of that, you know as fundraisers and you know as the advocates for the playground, it is what people have asked for quite clearly. So, we want to do that and it’ll be worth it. It’ll be great. But we’re hoping to wind up somewhere between 450 and 500 thousand dollars.

There have also been complaints of poor sight lines to supervise children and used hypodermic needles found mixed in wood chips.

Methner says the current fundraising will go with about $100,000 the foundation already has. They’ll look to grants and private donations for the rest.

The new playground will replace the current “Dream Playground” at Erickson Park. It was built by a cadre of volunteers in 2002, but according to city Parks and Rec Director Corey Delikat, the wooden structure is wearing out.

We’ve gone in and checked all the posts. We did some creative things by having some companies that come in and inject our cedar poles for telephone poles and we did that on the playground as well. So we can probably get two, three or four years out of that, but we just felt it was a really time to make a change.

The new playground will be made of composite-type materials and should last longer.

The design was put together after outreach with students in the Port Angeles School District last spring. Construction is expected to begin next August, and they hope to have it open and dedicated on September 11, 2020.