Hoping to Remodel Kidzville

An aging playground at Riverside Park is the cause of a grant application from the city of Zanesville.

The federal land and water conservation grant is  for $150,000. It will be decided on in the fall, but Zanesville Public Services Director, Jay Bennett said the city’s application is strong.

“I liked our application a lot because it talked about replacing something that was a community build in the mid ’90s with something very similar but adding to it,” he said.

Kidzville opened in 1995. It gets yearly inspections, but preventative maintenance work can’t always keep up. Bennett also said the city hopes to expand Kidzville by adding water features to it. He added that volunteer pledges could help the city get the grant.

“I think that came across in the application that we had an unbelievable amount of community volunteer hours pledge,” Bennett said.

The city will find out later on in the fall if it’s received the grant. Right now, the estimated cost for the project is $320,000. Bennett said if granted the $150,000 the city has money ready for the other half of the project.