Structure will include picnic tables, electricity, rest rooms

 
By Steve Bowman
Editor, The Brentwood Spirit
Email: bowmansj@sbcglobal.net

The City of Brentwood has received a grant for $370,000 to help build a new pavilion with picnic tables and rest rooms at Oak Tree Park. Design has begun and construction might be completed by late this year.

The grant request was submitted to the Municipal Park Grant Commission of St. Louis County by Brentwood’s Recreation Superintendent Eric Gruenenfelder. He said it will pay for most of the cost of the new facility, which is being estimated at $548,396. The remaining $178,396 is coming out of the city’s parks and recreation budget.

It will be the second major improvement in two years for Oak Tree Park. A large recreation area that includes slides, swings and a three-level tree house was completed in late 2014 at a cost of $250,000.

“Planning Design Studio did a park system master plan that called for a new playground at Oak Tree Park, with a pavilion and rest rooms to follow fairly quickly,” said Gruenenfelder.

He said the new facility will be built on a 28-foot by 38-foot concrete slab. Almost half of it will contain a roofed pavilion with four picnic tables and electric outlets. The other half will be men’s and women’s rest rooms.

Gruenenfelder said it will be located just west of the new playground, “between where the current pavilion is and the old playground was.”

On the timetable, he said, “I hope to have the project finished by late November or early December 2016.”

Gruenenfelder announced at the Feb. 12 Board of Aldermen meeting that the grant had been received. It drew applause from the room and several positive comments.

“I appreciate the pavilion because I was at Oak Tree Park yesterday and watched a man run his kid over to the tree line and have him go to the rest room,” said Alderman Keith Slusser. “I’m sure people will appreciate a bathroom over there.”