The Bayview Park Playground will be closed to the public beginning Monday, May 16 for the installation of new playground equipment. The completion of the new Bayview Park Playground is expected to be completed in mid-June.
Public access is prohibited during demolition and construction for safety reasons.
Features of the newly installed park playground include:
- Age-appropriate playgrounds for ages 2-5 and 5-15
- ADA accessible equipment
- Agility and balance equipment
- A toddler play area supportive of child development
- Eco-friendly equipment produced from recyclable materials
Bayview Park is located at 2001 E. Lloyd St. in Pensacola.
There is a sign on the playground equipment in Eastgate Park (Scenic Heights) that says it is unsafe for children but children are allowed to play all over it. The rubber frame around the children’s swing set is broken, dangerously so. I first reported it to the city in 2008. It has only gotten worse. A friend, also a friend of Commissioner May, told me it is so bad he will not let his grandchildren play near it for fear they might trip and fall. Also, the water fountain and mister that I had put in nearly a decade ago do not work. There are other lesser problems. There is no video camera to match the video camera sign. That would be important if PPD actively patrolled Scenic Heights and its parks in particular. We have had problems with homeless people camping in the park. A few months ago guy on drugs was going around and stole mail from a house next to the park. In recent weeks we have had young men to include those not from around here (some with Alabama tags on their vehicles) who play basketball in the dark late into the night cursing and using the N-word and F-word. One lives in Bellview because he left is wallet and I got it back to him at the Lowe’s where he worked. Some nights the b-ball players pull their cars “into” the park and play basketball by car light. They’ve done it as late as midnight. In a city park, that is closed, after dark, and with signs that say you cannot be in the park after dark or drive your car “into” the park. When we called a few weeks ago, a PPD officer did eventually show up but may have been afraid to stop as he drove right past the basketball court as the young men taunted him and said rude things about the Pensacola Police Department. We called again but no one came back. Only last week, some of the basketball players decided to cap off the evening by smoking some crack. (We often find used condoms near the basketball court or in the gutter near where their cars are parked.) It happens all the time and PPD doesn’t seem to much care but this time I saw a dealer pull up and make a transaction and then one guy said to the other, “Give me another gram.” I then called PPD. A unit drove by the wrong area of the park after they had left. A new neighbor asked me, “Why doesn’t the PPD patrol the park?” I told him that there are only two areas of importance in this city: Downtown and Bayview Park. Everyone else is pretty much on their own. That’s not just my opinion. For years, senior city staff have apologized telling me that no one in city hall cares about Scenic Heights. One of the problems is that almost no one in a senior position in city hall actually lives in the city. They just don’t care.