A Monday morning never felt so good for Sioux Center parks director Lee Van Meeteren.

Gov. Kim Reynolds gave the green light for playgrounds to open again June 1, allowing Van Meeteren and his crew to rip the caution tape off the playground equipment to invite families to more thoroughly enjoy the city’s park amenities.

“It’s a feeling of relief,” said Van Meeteren, holding handfuls of tape. “We want people in our parks and our community takes a lot of pride in providing a fun, clean park space. For us to see people outside enjoying the space we help maintain is fun to see.

Bike station

The bike repair station located near the Little Library includes an air pump for bicycle tires and wrenches and screwdrivers for adjustments. Nearby there are also bike stands to park and lock bikes.

Smartphone users may also scan the QR code on the repair station to bring up information on what tools to use for certain projects.

This is part of the new trail head at Children’s Park for Sioux Center’s seven-plus miles of recreation trail.

“In doing the parks planning with Ground Effects, one of their designers had put one in Sioux Falls and shared that idea with us,” Van Meeteren said. “We thought Children’s Park would be a good place to start with one as it’s a place people might park to bring their bike into town to start or end on the trail.”

Van Meeteren, however, is looking at placing more repair stations along other areas of the bike trail for more convenience.

New restrooms

Adjacent to the Little Library and bike repair station is Children Park’s new handicapped accessible restroom.

“We want to make the parks enjoyable for everyone in the community and this was a big request during the community input portion of the parks master planning,” Van Meeteren said. “Having concrete path up to the restroom instead of gravel and having them near the playground equipment instead of the middle of the gravel parking lot really makes it more easily accessible for all.”

Outside the restroom facility are drinking fountains and bottle fill stations.

“That’s something the community is going to start to see more of,” Van Meeteren said. “With it being hands free, you don’t have to worry about who drank out of the fountain last. We heard from a lot of moms that they often want a bottle fill for kids’ water bottles and knowing that this is a trail head and people are going to have water bottles on bikes, in thinking through how we make this restroom and water refill area, we wanted to do that right and think this is a perfect fit.”

NOTE: Content has been edited to focus on bicycle-centric content.