Sugar Grove Park District plans for more parks to open in 2024

While children are sledding, ice skating and building snowmen outdoors, the Sugar Grove Park District is busy working on its playgrounds for the warmer months to ensure outdoor fun in the sun in 2024 and beyond.

This past fall, the Sugar Grove Park District unveiled its newest playground at Chelsea Park.

“We love it,” Sugar Grove resident Bridgette Green said. “When we first moved here, one of the reasons we moved was to be right next to the park.”

The mother of two who is expecting another child soon had noted that the park was in need of an upgrade. So she reached out to Karen Pritchard who was the executive director of the park district at that time.

“I talked to another neighbor and reached out to Karen [Pritchard] and gave her a bunch of feedback,” Green said. “She was good in keeping in touch with what we were seeing with the park and what we thought needed to be done there.”

After Pritchard’s retirement in 2022, Scott Nadeau became only the third executive director in the park district’s history in June of that year. After getting situated into his new role, Nadeau went to work on getting a new playground at Chelsea Park.

“As soon as Scott came on, it was done. He really got the ball rolling,” Green said. “I couldn’t believe it happened so quickly. He continued to let us give feedback. It seemed like everyone wanted somewhere to sit. We all pretty much picked the same structure so there was no disagreement with the structure. It’s just been awesome.”

So awesome that if you happen to visit the park on Labor Day there’s a good chance you’ll catch a spirited kickball game among neighbors.

“We’ve even started an annual Labor Day kickball game,” Green said. “We’ve been doing it two years in a row now. It’s been great.”

Chelsea Park had a formal ribbon-cutting Oct. 21, 2023, with the neighborhood children getting the honor of slicing the ribbon since not only will they enjoy the park most, but they also helped pick the design for the new play apparatus along with their parents.

About 30 Sugar Grove residents attended the ribbon-cutting along with Nadeau, Sugar Grove Park District Board President Dawn Eby, park district commissioners Jesse Kinsland and Ralph Voris and Township of Sugar Grove Supervisor Tom Rowe.

“We were able to excavate the original playground with the help of the village of Sugar Grove and the Township of Sugar Grove,” Nadeau said. “That alone allowed us to save the taxpayers nearly $20,000.”

Now that Chelsea Park has been redeveloped, the Sugar Grove Park District has directed its attention toward Dugan Park.

“I’ve received feedback that they want the playground to focus more on the 5 to 12 age group,” Nadeau said. “That was strongly agreed upon by everybody I was meeting with and emailing with. Their attitude was the younger age group is great, but they age out of it quickly. They want something older kids can love and appreciate and can go and enjoy.”

Sugar Grove resident Elli Fuchs said there’s a great deal of excitement about revamping Dugan Park.

“We’re excited to get a new park no matter what,” she said. “It’s always going to be a little meet up space with lots of stuff to do there. It’s a really good meeting ground and the kids also will go down to the pond and fish.”

It’s not just the fact that her family soon will have a new park to visit, but that they’ve been invited to help shape what the park ultimately becomes that has impressed Sugar Grove’s Sarah Whitefleet.

“I felt heard by Scott and the park district was really receptive to our ideas,” she said. “We’ve been able to work very collaboratively.”

In addition to major upgrades to Dugan Park, the Sugar Grove Park District is working on the redevelopment of Black Walnut Park with hopes of landing an Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development grant to assist in the efforts.

“There are plenty of parents that will go to their neighborhood playground, but when the kids are bored with that they’ll drive to Oswego, Aurora or Naperville to someone else’s playground,” Nadeau said. “Sugar Grove’s playgrounds are somewhat cookie cutters right now and aren’t as exciting and different, so this will become something new for them. We’ve experienced it already at Chelsea. People who don’t live in the neighborhood like what they see. We want that for all of our parks. They should be Sugar Grove destinations.”