When students at Dayton’s Lincoln Elementary School returned from Spring Break this week, they were surprised to find that the City of Dayton had installed a new GaGa Pit — a fast-paced, dodgeball-style game played in an octagonal pit with walls — in Gil Lynn Park next their school.
The GaGa Pit is the first of many improvements planned in the coming year for Dayton City parks, which will likely see about $500,000 improvements made to them. The City’s Park Tax, which has seen a substantial increase revenue in recent years because of new development in the city, is the funding source for these improvements.
The City and Dayton Independent Schools unveiled the GaGa Pit on Monday at surprise ceremony after members of the elementary school Student Council met with Mayor Ben Baker and City Administrator Jay Fossett three weeks ago to discuss improvements they wanted to see at Gil Lynn Park, which is located adjacent to Lincoln Elementary, Dayton High School, and the school district’s new athletic complex that will be dedicated late this summer.
“When we met with members of the Student Council, they provided us with a lot of good ideas about how to improve Gil Lynn Park, but construction of a GaGa Pit was by far their top priority,” Baker said.
“In addition, the City’s Park Board recently made a number of recommendations to City Council for improvements it would like to see in both Gil Lynn Park and Sargeant Park, and City Staff and City Council discussed these recommendations at its day-long Strategic Planning session this past Saturday.”
At the Dayton City Council meeting last Tuesday, City Council approved a contract to spend $111,300 to improve the pavilion, garage, bathrooms, and concession stand at Gil Lynn Park and the pavilion at Sargeant Park.
Other Gil Lynn Park improvements recommended by the Park Board and City Staff are:
• Construction of four pickleball courts ($145,000)
• Replacement of playground equipment ($200,000)
• Resurfacing basketball courts ($40,000), and
• GaGa Pit ($4,000)
“We are very fortunate to have seven great public parks in our City,” Mayor Baker said. “Gil Lynn is one of our largest parks and our most active park, but it is starting to show its age, and these improvements will make it a more inviting public space for our children, our residents, and our visitors.”
Mayor Baker said that because of its proximity to the high school and elementary school, the school district and its students are the heaviest users of the park. The high school baseball and softball teams both play their home games on fields at Gil Lynn Park and the football team uses it for practice. In addition, the schools use the park for gym classes, recesses, and special events, and students also use the park after school and on weekends, Mayor Baker said.
“This new GaGa Pit and the other improvements the City plans to make at Gil Lynn Park means the world to these kids, especially since they had the opportunity to speak up and have their voices heard by the City administration,” Dayton Independent Schools Superintendent Rick Wolf said. “It’s important for our schools and our city to continue to work together and see what we can do to make things better for our kids.”
The City of Dayton and Dayton Independent Schools both will contribute funding to construct new playground equipment at Gil Lynn Park. Much of the existing playground equipment at the park is about 20 years old or older and in poor condition.
The City also is making a significant investment in Sargeant Park, a bucolic, passive park in the southern part of the City, with more than two miles of natural hiking trails and Covert Run creek running through it.
In 2021, the City invested about $200,000 to construct trails and make other improvements to Sargeant Park, which was funded by grants from the Kentucky Recreational Trails (“KRT”) program ($91,000), L’Oreal ($80,000), Duke Energy ($2,000), and the City Park Tax Fund ($17,000). Last year, the city obtained another $120,000 grant from the KRT program to improve the existing trails and construct new trails in the park. This trail project was recently completed and the new and improved trails opened to the public a couple of weeks ago.
In addition, the City is working with the Northern Kentucky Stream and Wetland Restoration Program (“NKSWRP”) at Northern Kentucky University to undertake a major stream restoration project in Sargeant Park, which will address erosion problems caused by the creek, remove dangerous trees, and incorporate other improvements to the park and its ecosystem.
The project is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (“USACE”), which approves projects like this one. When completed, these improvements are expected to be in the range of $1 million. All funding for the project will come from NKSWRP.
City of Dayton