Parents have criticized their council after a popular children’s playground was given a $2 million facelift and converted into something resembling ‘a prison’.
The City of Yarra opened the new Cambridge Street Reserve, in Melbourne’s Collingwood, on Sunday.
The park was doubled in size and the municipality’s mayor, Claudia Nguyen, crowned it the largest in the area.
But the project has upset mums and dads after the council removed traditional play equipment from most parks and largely replaced them with grass areas.
The park used to include a jungle gym with a slide, two swings and a spring swing, all shaded by nearby trees.
In its place now stands a pair of minimalist metal play equipment, including a single nest swing, balance beam and climbing frame.
Previously: Before the upgrade, the park had a climbing frame with a slide, a set of swings and a spring seesaw (photo)
After: Parents have criticized Yarra City Council for a $2 million park upgrade that saw a children’s playground replaced with an ‘uninviting’ swing (pictured), balance beam and climbing frame
Local parents have described the upgrade as a ‘failure’ as some claim their children no longer want to visit the once popular playground.
One parent told Nine News they had hoped for ‘a little more for the little ones’, while another described the minimalist design as ‘prison-like’.
Another mother said the new playground didn’t feel as inviting to young children as before.
“(My daughter) looks at it honestly and runs the other way,” she said.
Other parents criticized the equipment itself, with one mother saying only one child could enjoy the swing at a time, while the climbing frames are too high for a child to reach and the balance beam was an ‘injury in waiting’.
A brave toddler said the park ‘needs more programming’.
A petition calling on the council to reverse the changes and reinstate the old playground quickly collected more than 600 signatures.
Yarra City Council has pledged more than $700,000 for the new park, while the state government footed a $1.3 million bill to complete it.
A council spokesperson said that during the consultation a majority of local people expressed their wish for an open green space, and they achieved this.
“In a suburb like Collingwood, which has only 0.3% open space, expanding the size of the park was a key driver for the park’s design,” the spokesperson told Ny Breaking Australia.
“The council has responded to the needs of the community by building a new park twice its original size.
“Only five of the 171 people who responded requested traditional playground equipment.”
The council is currently overseeing two more park upgrades, the Otter Street Pocket Park in Collingwood and Charlotte Street Pocket Park in Richmond.