Martin Road Park to overhaul playground equipment

FERNDALE — Ferndale’s largest park will be getting new playground equipment as early as this fall.

The city of Ferndale announced that it has received grant funding for new equipment at Martin Road Park’s playground to replace the aging structures at the site.

Parks and Recreation Director LaReina Wheeler said the playground equipment in the park will be removed and the new equipment will be placed in an area that makes more sense for park users. She said that construction will begin as early as this fall or Spring 2027.

“The play structure that was in the center of the park is very old — well over 25 years old,z’ she said. “Also (it’s) in an area that often floods and has ponding water for days at a time after a rain event and is deemed unusable. Because of all that rain and standing water around the playing structure, it’s degraded; it made it unusable. It’s old, so it’s not as safe. So, it needed to be removed anyway because we’re trying to protect public safety.”

The removal and location change of the equipment also will allow the city to expand the playground, according to Wheeler, as it will be located in a bigger area.

“Previously, it was two separate locations where we had play equipment,” she said. “Now it will all be in one spot, and it’ll be a larger area so parents can watch their children in one area as opposed to two separate areas when playing in our parks. We will have more modern equipment, more modern swing sets and some additional fun amenities that we didn’t have before.”

The funding comes from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Land and Water Conservation Fund, Oakland County Parks and the GameTime National Demonstration Site Project.

MDNR is providing a $150,000 grant, $64,000 will come from Oakland County Parks and $118,000 will come from GameTime. The total project costs is approximately $330,000, Wheeler stated. The current estimate for the opening of the playground equipment is the fall.

Councilman Donnie Johnson rated the current state of Martin Road Park as a “work in progress” but said it’s an asset that can be a jewel among Ferndale’s public spaces.

“We always want to bring our parks and our public spaces to the best they can be,” he said. “We want to continue to make improvements so that everybody’s experience in our parks is good.

“It’s a large park and to make all of the sort of investments that any recreation department or any city government would like to make would take quite a bit of money, and so we’re just having to do it in phases over time as we get grants, as we work through capital funding availability,” Johnson continued. “They’re definitely nice visions for the future and we’re going to keep working on it together.”