A new child-designed playground has landed in Knoxville's Montgomery Village after neighbors, city and county partners, KCDC and KaBOOM! turned three hot, sweaty days of construction into a finished playspace. The project pairs slides and places to sit with an adult workout station, giving a South Knoxville housing community a new place for kids—and grown-ups—to burn off energy.
The City of Knoxville said in a Friday post that the playspace was designed around ideas gathered from neighborhood children and families, then built by the community in July. The update described the project as a source of community pride and highlighted features including a slide, seating and a workout station, as shown in the city's photo update.
Designed By Montgomery Village Kids, Built By Neighbors
The playground was built Wednesday at Community Unity Park after two days of site preparation, according to Knox TN Today. Children and adults from the neighborhood helped shape the design during community sessions in June.
The finished space includes two slides, group swings, ladders, monkey bars, an adaptive merry-go-round and a Cozy Cocoon chair intended to provide a sensory retreat. An adult fitness area and an accessible path were also included in the plans, making this more than a standard playground dropped into an empty patch of grass.
A New Amenity For A 380-Unit South Knoxville Community
Community Unity Greenway is a 0.4-mile loop next to the Montgomery Village housing area, the City of Knoxville's greenway page notes. The neighborhood itself is a 380-unit KCDC community with an on-site recreation park, according to KCDC's Montgomery Village page.
The project also came with a substantial public investment: Knoxville and Knox County each contributed $100,000, while KCDC coordinated community support and contributions, Knox TN Today reported. The result is a neighborhood amenity that was funded from the top but assembled at ground level, one swing set and support beam at a time.
For Montgomery Village families, the headline is simple: there is now a safer, more varied place to play close to home. And because local children helped decide what went in, the new playground arrives with something many public projects spend years trying to manufacture—an immediate sense that it belongs to the people who will use it.
