Kershaw County breaks ground for new playground

LUGOFF, SC (WIS) - By the end of October, Kershaw County will have a new state-of-the-art playground.

Saturday morning community leaders broke ground at the site of the new facility.

The fully ADA-compatible community playground will be built at the Kershaw County West Sports Complex off U.S. 1 in Lugoff on Whitehead Road. Dozens turned out for the ceremony, which culminates less than a year of fundraising and an idea from committee chair Laurey Carpenter.

"Having over 100 individuals come for the groundbreaking. It is just amazing and obviously it was the right idea," said Carpenter.

Elgin's Mayor Melissa Emmons was in attendance for the groundbreaking as well as Camden's Mayor Tony Scully, county board members and many other elected officials including State Senator Thomas McElveen and his family.

The community helped raise the funds in about nine months to build the playground. More than 280 businesses and organizations contributed to the project and its estimated, when the playground is complete, volunteers will have logged more than 15,000 hours. Their mission: to make a safe, accessible and fun playground for the community to enjoy.

"We have individualized play units for special needs children that will include cars and a little fire engine. We also have special swings so all children will be able to swing," said Carpenter. "All of the playground equipment will have wheelchair accessible ramps so they'll be able to reach all items. So, that will allow all children to be able to have somewhere to play that's safe and it's going to be phenomenal when it's complete."

Carpenter said this will be the first ADA accessible playground in Kershaw County and with the size of it, the largest ADA accessible playground in the Midlands area for 11 counties.

On September 17-19, the community will once again come together to build the playground. Special rubberized surfacing is expected to be installed by the end of October. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for November 14.

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