Smart City readies Sensory Park for children with special needs at Saheed Nagar

Bhubaneswar: Children and adults, especially those with special needs, now have a reason to cheer about as the Smart City Bhubaneswar has come up with the first-ever fully-equipped Sensory Park in the city in the Saheed Nagar area.

Located at Plot No-1786 on Maharshi college road in Ward No-30, the park has many exclusive features meant for the special kids so that they would be safe and do not worry about their safety while spending quality time there, inside the park with family and friends.

The facility, developed with an investment of Rs 93 lakh by the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) over an area of 0.37 acres (16,117 square feet), has insulated pathways laid with ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) flooring, playing equipment for physically challenged kids, special open-air gym equipment, ensuring adherence to the Universal Access Guidelines, safety to the users with clean environment and shrubs/trees planted with theme of child-friendly components.

The Sensory Park project is an important initiative under the Smart City Proposal. As the city has lined up many projects to be completed or nearing completion under the Smart City plan, this would be a great addition to the already existing network of over 120 parks across the State Capital.

“This unique project will provide recreational facility at Saheed Nagar area for physically challenged people. By providing a park with the special features it would help the physically challenged children and their kin during early morning and evening hours. Provision of play equipment and open-air gym will also encourage the special kids and adults to remain fit and smart,” said CEO of BSCL Sanjay Kumar Singh.

It can be mentioned here that in its Smart City Proposal submitted during the Smart City Challenge process the Temple City has presented a child-friendly theme-based proposal, which, with its ideas and challenging concept won the race and Bhubaneswar had won the challenge with Rank 1 among the 100 participating cities from across the nation.

Though the work for the Sensory Park had started in 2018, due to some legal issues, the work progress was delayed. However, recently the work got a major boost and the overall work was completed.

The children’s rides inside the Sensory Park include wheelchair swing, two-seater swing, bucket swing, multiline swing, single-seater spring rider, musical polls, sound play, drum track, musical panel, sound play table, shoulder builder, 3-seater ground-level merry-go-round (MGR), multi-seater MGR, wheelchair MGR, slides, two-seater spring see-saw, double bar see-saw, monkey bar climber, ball pool, adventure climber and multi play.

There is also a Braille wall of alphabets, basketball pole, adequate lighting, security room, underground water tank and dustbins.

All the rides and equipment are with safety features and the ground is covered with EPDM flooring or sand to provide the specially-abled kids a safe and beautiful ambience to play and learn. The park will be inaugurated very soon.