Playground equipment at Freeland Park that’s nearly three decades old will finally be replaced next year.

Island County Parks Superintendent Jan vanMuyden explained to Island County commissioners during a work session this week that the department originally planned to replace the playground at the park on Holmes Harbor in 2020, but the pandemic delayed the project.

He requested that the funding for the project be moved into the county’s capital improvement plan for the year 2022. The cost will be increased from $185,000 to $227,000.

The parks superintendent assured the commissioners that the playground will engage and be accessible to children with different abilities and a wide range of ages.

“We wanted to make sure that we ran the gamut from very young to pre-teen,” he said, adding that it will include educational and problem-solving elements.

At nearly 30 years old, the current playground equipment is at the end of its useful life, vanMuyden said.

The county plans to work with a company that King County has on-call for playground-related needs. The company works in communities up and down the West Coast.

The playground equipment will be funded through the “second quarter percent” real estate excise tax, or REET 2. These revenues can only be used for financing capital projects, especially infrastructure and parks construction projects.