Pearland City Council at its April 25 meeting passed two resolutions in a unanimous vote, one of which gave the playground its commemorative name and the other approved a cooperative purchase agreement with the Texas Buy Board for roughly $1.3 million in funds dedicated to the playground.
“It was exactly almost one year ago that I met Ed and Freddie Thompson at the Davis Days Crawfish Boil,” said Nikki Kamkar, board member at Forever Parks Foundation. “While they were there to enjoy crawfish and refreshments, I had a playground to tell them about.”
At the crawfish boil, Kamkar lobbied Thompson, who is a state representative for District 29, to attend the Forever Parks Foundation fundraising campaign kickoff, she said.
Forever Parks Foundation is a nonprofit organization that started the fundraiser to secure the funds needed to build the playground. An all-inclusive playground allows children of all abilities and developmental stages to play in the area.
Thompson showed up at the event, and a couple of weeks later, Kamkar received a text message from him asking for the designs to the all-inclusive playground. Thompson was going to present them to state officials. By July, the nonprofit was awarded a $750,000 grant from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department for the playground.
“That is when the dominoes really started to fall,” Kamkar said. “Since then as a foundation, we have raised an additional $230,000 with more than $200,000 in grants still pending. We know we are absolutely going to close the gap to get to surfacing and have this ribbon-cutting in the fall.”
Some of the features of the all-inclusive playground include a wheelchair swing, a sensory tunnel, a music area, a bird-themed hut and a gallery walk with 3D images of the playground design.
“This is an awesome night to be here and watching this playground move forward,” Pearland Mayor Kevin Cole said. “The folks at the foundation took the ball eight years ago. ... This is a big occasion, and I know these costs keep moving. Tonight we can finally nail down some costs. We still have the surface to go, but it is a big, big deal.”
The all-inclusive playground will be located next to the Miracle Field, which is a baseball diamond that has a rubberized surface, according to agenda documents. The inclusive playground will have a similar rubberized surface. It will also be Brazoria County’s first all-inclusive playground, Kamkar said.
“This was not something I expected to come to tonight,” Thompson said. “I am a little bit lost for words for what to really say other than it is an honor to have a park like this named [after] me.”
