The zipline at Idlewild Park has been replaced and upgraded as the City of Cranbrook and the Rotary Club celebrated the zipline’s grand opening on Thursday.
Initially a single-track design, the new zipline is a double-track system and has been dubbed the “crown jewel” of the Idlewild Park playground area.
Estimated to cost $65,000, the Rotary Club raised $35,000 of the money for the project, also helping with the installation and playing a major role in the zipline remaining at Idlewild Park.
“A really great opportunity, as far as working with the Rotary Club was it did allow us to do a double zipline, so increase the capacity and go with a model that was safer than what we previously had but also had four entry points on two lanes,” said Chris New, Director of Community Services with the City of Cranbrook. “We’ve already seen a number of classrooms up here where we have lineups of like 30 kids just hitting it hard and enjoying and it’s really crowned the whole playground.”
“You come here any day of the week, you’re going to have lots and lots of kids and their moms and their dads and their grandparents,” Bill Bennett, told MyEastKootenayNow.com, President of the Cranbrook Rotary Club. “I was here on the weekend with my granddaughter and we had to wait in line to use the zipline.”
About three years ago, the City of Cranbrook began to develop a Master Plan for Idlewild Park, undertaking extensive community consultation to see what residents wanted and hoped to have at the Park.
“One of the themes that did come out was definitely keep the zipline and we heard that a number of times,” said New. “Of course that fit into a large plan that has been surprisingly quick to implement over the last three years with the playgrounds and the docks and the piers and the paving and all of these types of things.”
Even with the zipline ready to go, Idlewild Park’s Rehabilitation isn’t done just yet. The City of Cranbrook and the Rotary Club of Cranbrook are teaming up once again for a new paved pathway called the Idlewild Ridge Trail which hopes to improve access.
“It’s going to be a paved trail that will make this park accessible to people who have more difficulty moving around, wheelchairs and scooters and that sort of thing,” said Bennett. “That’s a big project, that’s an expensive project, we haven’t quite started it, but we’re going to get there, probably this fall.”
Rotary Club of Cranbrook has made significant contributions at Idlewild Park, also constructing and installing the new playground feature at the park, amongst their contributions to the zipline and their continuing commitment to the new Idlewild Ridge Trail.
