Invercargill's first full playground renewal in years has reopened in South City, and it comes with features the city has never seen in a neighbourhood park before.
Pomona St Playground officially opened on Wednesday after nearly four months of construction, unveiling what council Play Advocate Dr Damien Puddle says is a fundamentally different approach to how the city builds and upgrades its play spaces.
"The entire design of the playground is based on community engagement and school involvement, which is something we've never done before," Puddle said.
Local schools including Newfield Park School and Southland Girls' High School were involved in shaping the design. That input is visible in the detail — playable art will be painted on the footpaths to complete a 'ground is lava' challenge, with designs and placement drawn directly from Newfield Park students.
The playground is also home to the city's first public sandpit, with a play box of second-hand sand tools donated by Jennian Homes through Active Southland. Other new features include fruit trees, herb plantings, a climbable timber shelter and a section of pump track. Repurposed macrocarpa sleepers, rocks and posts are woven through the landscaping.
The design follows the Play Opportunities Through Environmental Design approach, which folds play into functional elements rather than treating them separately. "Features like timber edging can serve a functional purpose while enabling play opportunities like balancing," Puddle said.
The site was chosen after a city-wide analysis identified it as the area with the greatest need and most potential. That whole-playground focus is deliberate. "Rather than spreading our limited resources thinly across many sites with small, piecemeal fixes, we've decided to target entire playgrounds to upgrade. This allows us to look at the whole design, working closely with the community to incorporate more inclusive play opportunities and make innovative choices, while being more cost effective overall," Puddle said.
The build came in at just over $100,000 and took roughly three and a half months. A small number of elements are still to be installed, including a communication board in English and te reo Māori to support people with limited speech or language ability.
For Puddle, the result speaks for itself. "Pomona St Playground is a small park but it's such a huge asset to this neighbourhood and to the city. Seeing children – and adults – walk into the playground and immediately find something fun to interact with is incredibly rewarding and shows our award-winning Play Strategy in action."