Norman City Council Special Session: Kid Space Playground Contract and Executive Session – September 1, 2026
Norman City Council Special Session – September 1, 2026
The transcribed meeting begins at 22:06:22 UTC on September 1, 2026; no end time was recorded. No agenda or minutes were provided, so this summary is based only on the raw transcript. The session covered the Kid Space playground rebuild funding and design, and ended with a motion into executive session.
Discussion Items
- Kid Space rebuild plan. Staff presented a two-year Reese Park project to demolish the existing Kid Space playground, begin demolition in November with the OU School of Architecture, begin site work in 2027, and hold a week-long community build in March, similar to the original 1999 community build. Year-one work would include the 5-to-12 play area, fencing, sidewalks, lighting, and signage; year-two would include the 2-to-5 tot lot, public art, and finishing site work. The goal is to complete phase one before the April Medieval Fair.
- Funding request and figures. Staff requested a one-time $400,000 city contribution through Norman Forward, with Tset grant funds and a 20% minimum city match of $119,000, for an approximately $1 million total project. The transcript also contains some conflicting or fragmented funding figures, including references to $299,000 per year, $519,000 total, and a later reference to $600,000 from Tset.
- Amenities and design features. Planned amenities include solar lighting, three small shelters made from recycled Kid Space wood, a large shelter with the OU School of Architecture, a new donor wall next to the original donor wall, and a new restroom building with seven family-style single-occupancy ADA restrooms, including one with an adult changing table. Staff said the restroom project was previously over budget and will be rebid, with completion targeted by April.
- Site preservation and landscaping. Staff said most existing trees would be preserved; some invasive lacebark elms may be removed, with replacement trees planted. Parking on the south side of the drive would be removed. A future splash pad is planned adjacent to the project but is not included in this scope. Landscaping work would emphasize native, drought-resistant, and butterfly-friendly plantings.
- Council questions and positions. One councilmember asked whether the $400,000 ask was a one-time amount; staff confirmed it was. That councilmember also tied it to previously discussed extra Norman Forward funds, and staff said the Tset grant reduced an earlier $1 million project figure to a $400,000 request. Another councilmember expressed a desire to keep the old swing set just north of Kid Space, calling it the last piece of the original playground. Another councilmember asked about preserving Kid Space towers or slides; staff said safety standards make playground reuse unlikely, but features could potentially be used as public art, and the original 1999 build would be memorialized, possibly using old tiles. Councilmember Gansberg asked for a wheelchair-accessible swing access; staff committed to including one. Staff also said the playground would be highly accessible, with a poured surface rather than wood chips. Staff expected to return with the finalized playground design in 30–45 days.
Key Outcomes
- The council approved the contract for the Kid Space project. The motion passed by voice vote, with no opposition heard.
- The council voted to adjourn out of the special session and convene into executive session under Oklahoma Statutes Title 25, Section 307(B)(4), to discuss the pending investigation and claim regarding the Young Family Athletic Center. The motion passed.
Meeting Transcript
Where it would be, and hopefully we'd be done with phase one before the start of the medieval fair. Okay. That's our plans. Anne Marie Yecker. She uh the person I would say is the in charge of Mabel Fair. Um, there's a lot of people, but she's the main person. She was on the Reese Park committee. Um I think got it as close to arranged in the best way that would uh benefit them. And their big thing was like there being outlets built in the park and stuff like that that could plug into. But yeah, they were definitely involved in shaping this map. Councilmember according to that schedule, April is when the fair happens. Would be interesting, they celebrating it and kind of notifying people on the way into medieval fair. Yes. And two, we would um uh as to show you here in a second, too. Hopefully be done with a a restroom project at that point and uh a few new shelters. Uh the full breakdown is the schedule, start demo demolition of the Kid Space. Uh uh let the OU School of Architecture start in November and then um 2027 is when we actually start site uh site work. Uh uh, we need to hire it's a pretty big space. We have to hire a surveyor. Uh we're working with a local architect to make sure that everything properly drains is a big investment. We don't want flooding on the site. There uh Bruce Park does tend to have areas that do gather a lot of water when it rains hard. Uh uh plan on in March to uh simulate exactly what we did in 1999 uh when we built the original Kid Space by having a community build over a full week. Work with uh the schools in in Norman and of course uh all of our our residents to help us uh erect the playground as quick as possible. Hopefully in April, get everything done with the year one projects that include uh sidewalks, lighting, site furnishings, uh so forth and so on, along with the playground in September. Uh this time next year we'll start uh round two, which is broke off of basically $300,000 a year. Uh year one will be the main playground building. Next year would be the top slot uh and um public art, and then hopefully by the end of the next year, we will be done and complete with the project. So we do not come plan on doing a community build with the the tot lot. We'll we're planning on paying a uh contractor to come in there and install that so it would be done in a a quicker and a less stressful um way for for the parks department. Uh as we start talking about this, I want to highlight uh that each year is 299,000 uh from um um T set uh for a total of 519,000. If uh the city uh minimally minimum portion that we need to to supply it is 20%, which would be 119, but what we're asking for today is uh 400,000 so that we make sure that we can do this project correct um to an up nicest standard. Uh like I said, it is the most important playground uh in uh the Norman's uh parks system. Uh it'd be about a million dollar uh total total investment for everything. Um once again, six hundred thousand dollars cover from T Set, so that'd be a cost uh to us for about four hundred thousand dollars. All this would be funded through Norma Ford. Wanna want to um make it very obvious that the grant will also be funded through Norman Ford, and then as we get payback from T set, that would be placed back into the Norm Ford fund. Uh these are the how the projects would look like the the things that we'll be accomplishing um play area for the five to twelve year olds uh will be done year one fencing around that playground along with sidewalks signage, uh the art wall. I'll show you in the next picture. It's a hand-drawn uh a site plan for it. Uh lighting will be going um all said and done. We're trying to do everything with uh with solar lighting on this project. Year two would be the totl lot to five uh two to five-year-olds, uh public art fence, finishing out a little bit of sidewalk and signage for uh the project. So miscellaneous projects will be going on simultaneously, not necessarily caught up in the cost of this million dollars. Uh we do have a large shelter uh which is about $80,000 all in from um typically the cost of that. We've already done a presentation on that would be in the $400,000 range. Uh that would be done for um from the school of uh architecture. Uh small shelters, so uh uh we'll show you in the next picture. We're playing three small shelters. We're hopefully gonna be able to recycle the wood.
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