On Tuesday, March 29 Long Beach officials came together to unveil the new playground area at Colorado Lagoon Park in East Long Beach.
“We couldn’t be more excited to be here at the Colorado Lagoon,” said Mayor Robert Garcia. “We all know that this is one of the crown jewels of Long Beach.”
The new play area is designed for children between the ages of 2 and 12, with sections dedicated to toddlers and younger children, new seating areas and fresh grass around the play area.
The new structures are designed to use the children’s imagination with areas for role-playing, like a general store mockup and telescope as an ode to its former design as a pirate ship.
For building up the body, the city has included slides, swings, bridges and climbing walls for children to scamper up, down and all across.
“This playground is exceptional,” said Brent Dennis, director of the Parks Recreation and Marine Department. “Being a landscape architect and your parks director, I really appreciate the design elements; my hat’s off to the design team over here.”
For childrens’ waiting parents, the park has new and improved picnic tables and seating areas, renewed landscaping, and improved pathways to make them more accessible to people living with disabilities.
For some parents, the biggest appeal of the renovations is the new covering over the play area. For the summer months, parents and their children can sit in the shade or splash around in the lagoon.
Moriah Citrano, a mother who lives on the other side of the lagoon, came for the opening day with her two children.
“I really like that it is age-appropriate for the kids I have,” Citrano said. “My 2-year-old can play in the grass while my older daughter plays in the playground.“
The playground is the tenth park renovation in the last four years that came from a larger city-wide push to improve city infrastructure using funds from Measure A, which was passed by voters in 2016.
“Remember: parks make life better and parks make Long Beach better,” Dennis said.