Work On Baxter’s Seminary Park Playground Complete

The Baxter Seminary Park reached a milestone today, and the community celebrated with a  ribbon cutting.

Mayor John Martin said that he never imagined a project like this could happen in Baxter. He said that when he first ran for mayor, the area was completely overgrown and covered in junk, but now it’s a beautiful park for the community of Baxter to enjoy.

“We want people to use this park,” Martin said. “BlueCross said they wanted an update of people using the park. They won’t have to worry about that because before we paved, before everything was finished, kids were over here playing on that park all the time anyway. That’s what’s it’s all about.”

Martin said that the park has play equipment, an amphitheater, and is also exploring grants to bring a potential splash pad to the park.

Martin said another great aspect of the park is its safety. He said that not only is the 5-inch thick turf spongey and absorbent to protect kids at play, there are also security cameras throughout.

“It means so much and I think it’s just protection,” Martin said. “We can go back, if there’s vandalism here, we can go back and we can see what’s going on in our park.”

Martin said that the work was made possible by a number of people and with the help of a $750,000 grant from BlueCross Blue Shield. He said the work has been a long time in the making.

“When I was elected,” Martin said. “We passed by this park and it was all grown-up. It was over a head high. There was junk all in this area. And we had a vision. Just like our amphitheater, that was the first thing we did, in our park. But we wanted a play park. We were just extremely lucky that we got the grant from Blue Cross to do this.”

Martin said he’s thankful for all of the help from the community leaders to make this park a possibility. He said that its projects like this position Baxter as a place of interest for developers, because it can exhibit itself as a nice and safe community.