CARRABASSETT VALLEY – The playground of Franklin County will soon have a playground in this ski and golf resort town.

Carrabassett Valley, which is home to Sugarloaf ski resort and golf course, a rushing river for boaters, a Nordic ski center and a six-mile recreation pathway, has been awarded $22,500 toward renovating a basketball court and building a playground.

Voters will be asked Dec. 11 to appropriate a matching amount to the grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a division of the National Park Service.

The matching money is already in hand: $18,000 in a playground improvement reserve fund and $4,500 in the town’s recreation department fund, Town Manager David Cota said.

The current wooden playground at the town park is more than 20 years old, and Deb Bowker, director of the valley’s recreation department, said it has deteriorated, cracked and become a safety concern.

“It’s time,” said Cota, to replace it.

On an average summer day, upwards of 400 people, mostly children, come to the town park, which Bowker describes as a focal point of the community. Youngsters in Carrabassett Valley attend summer camp in the park, and often camps from nearby Kingfield and Stratton use the facilities.

With the recent completion of a $750,000 reconstruction project on the Narrow Gauge Recreational Pathway, which is accessed from the town park, usage should grow.

Many people in the community have been outspoken about improving the playground and abutting basketball court, Bowker says.

A playground committee has been formed. Members include Selectman John Beupre; Dutch Demshar, a local contractor who built the original playground and will do the work on the new one; Bill Munzer, animal control officer; Andre DeBiase, a local nursery school owner; and Shelly Sada, a community parent.

Bowker estimated it will cost upward of $15,000 to fix the basketball court, and he’s hoping that another $20,000 plus will be raised for the entire project. That would bring the total amount for the project $65,000.

The grant award was announced last week.

“You just don’t know,” Bowker said, of getting grants amid major competition. “You’ve really got to show a need when you apply for these things and we did.”

Townspeople are behind the project including those she least expected to be, Bowker says happily. That makes her optimistic that they will approve the additional appropriation of funds at the December meeting at the touring center.

For more information about the project, or to make a donation, phone Deb Bowker at 237-5566.

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