If you have ever wondered what a ‘kid magnet’ looks like, wonder no more. It looks like a spray park. This is a typical day at the Clyde Fant Parkway Riverview Park Spray Park before 2015.
RiverView Park Spray Park, pre-2015
In 2015, the kiddos and the dancing water went away, victim to a pretty terrible Red River flood that inundated the park, the Clyde Fant Parkway and got so high as to lap on the doors of Sci-Port Discovery Center.
The Red River on the rise in 2015.
RiverView Park was cleaned up in the aftermath, but the guts of the spray fountain system were fried, dead and gone. It did not make sense to SPAR (Shreveport Parks and Recreation) or the city to keep repairing or replacing a system that was just going to continue to need repair or replacement, so the spray park went on temporary hiatus- until now.
Having fun in the sun.
New technology has been developed that will now allow the guts of the spray system to be constructed above grade instead of in a vault that is subject to water and heat. SPAR always longed to make the park functional again, and SPAR director Shelly Ragle told us they were able to find bits of money here and there in 2020 and 2021 and when the new technology came about, a good plan got even better.
The project is currently out to bid, and bid opening is planned for mid December. If the bids are in line with the budget, by the summer of 2024, downtown Shreveport should once again have a place for kids to run, play and splash and parents to enjoy.
