BENTONVILLE, Ark. — The City of Bentonville is adding a 25-acre park to their town. Right now, construction is currently in the works, and the park will be located next to Osage Elementary School.
"It's not your typical slide and swing type playgrounds. It's more of a climbing apparatus," David Wright, the Bentonville Parks and Recreation director, said. "It's something we're trying to captivate the attention of our young citizens a lot longer than what a normal playground would."
This is all part of the "Play Bentonville Plan" that the city council adopted in 2017. The park will be on Southwest 28th Street and will be apart of Bentonville's looped trail system.
"We should have a trail network presence on the west side of Bentonville the same way we do on the east side of town," Wright said.
Right now, there are 22 parks in Bentonville, and that number will continue to grow.
The new park will include a regulation-size cricket field and practice field. There will also be two pavilions near an open-spaced area, a playground and a splash park with a water slide. A large dog park is also in the plans with trees and a creek nearby.
"We're so lucky in Bentonville that our citizens really support the work that our team does with our trails, our parks and our recreation. Even in the days of COVID, our park use is actually up. We had a month of about 95% increase in trail usage over the last year," Wright told 5NEWS.
There's still no name for the park, but it will hopefully be done by the beginning of 2022. The park is projected to cost around $4.5 million.