The Beaumont City Council has approved $972,933 in equipment purchases to build inclusive playgrounds at Beaumont Sports Park and Wildflower Park, along with LED sports field lighting upgrades at Beaumont Sports Park. Council members signed off on the spending at the city's Oct. 6 meeting, also authorizing a 5% contingency that raises the maximum combined purchasing authority to $1.02 million.
According to the Record Gazette, the park improvements aim to expand recreational opportunities, encourage physical activity and create inclusive play environments. The city participates in the California Park and Recreation Society's statewide training and funding initiative, which provides special pricing for qualifying playground equipment and support for research-based recreational spaces, according to GameTime. Both Beaumont Sports Park and Wildflower Park were selected for GameTime's 2025 initiative and recognized as upcoming national demonstration sites, per the city staff report cited by the Record Gazette.
Beaumont Community Services Director Doug Story said being chosen for the designation twice is an opportunity to serve as a national demonstration site, per the same report. That status builds on the city's November 2023 debut of Shadow Creek Park, which opened as Beaumont's first all-inclusive playground and a national demonstration site through a CPRS/GameTime grant, featuring wheelchair ramps, sensory relief spaces, adaptive high-back equipment and musical play elements, according to the City of Beaumont.
Planning and Measuring Inclusive Play
Beaumont says it completed a Parks Master Plan in 2025 to set a shared vision for the future of its parks, recreation and community services. The city’s description establishes the plan’s broad purpose but does not identify specific growth-related needs or future improvements prioritized for these parks, according to the City of Beaumont. The seven inclusive-play principles described in the city report provide a design framework for the proposed playgrounds. Separately, GameTime says National Demonstration Sites join its registry and network for ongoing data collection. That program role is distinct from evidence of how Beaumont’s projects will perform, according to GameTime.
What's Being Built at Each Park
The council approved $418,306 for playground equipment, freight and sales tax at Beaumont Sports Park, a roughly 25-acre venue at the southeast corner of Brookside and Beaumont Avenues that already hosts adult and youth soccer fields, Little League baseball diamonds, youth flag football fields and a jogging track, per city documentation. GameTime provided the proposal through representative Great Western Recreation, and the plan includes custom play areas for children ages 2 to 5 and 5 to 12, freestanding play equipment, outdoor fitness equipment, and grant and cash-with-order discounts for qualifying equipment, per the Record Gazette's reporting.
Separately, the council approved $268,873 for playground equipment at Wildflower Park, located on Tulip Circle East within Beaumont's Sundance master-planned neighborhood, where the park features pavilions and open play areas near local elementary schools, according to the City of Beaumont's recreation department. The Wildflower Park proposal includes equipment for multiple age groups plus additional freestanding play components. Combined, the two playground purchases total $687,180 including freight and applicable sales taxes. The park also doubles as a neighborhood activity hub, hosting student art display ceremonies and Beaumont Library District mobile storytime events for local children.
Both proposed playground designs incorporate research-based practices intended to encourage physical activity, develop motor skills, offer varying play challenges and foster interaction, while emphasizing connections to nature and accessibility for people with different abilities, per the city report cited by the Record Gazette. Playground structures designated as PlayCore and CPRS National Demonstration Sites must adhere to seven research-based principles of inclusive design — fair, included, smart, independent, safe, active and comfortable play — according to the City of Beaumont.
Lighting Retrofit Targets Energy Savings
The council also approved $285,753 for sports field lighting retrofit equipment from Musco Sports Lighting LLC, which will upgrade fixtures serving soccer fields 3 and 4, the football field and the warm-up area at Beaumont Sports Park. The purchase covers factory-aimed, assembled LED fixtures, remote electrical component enclosures, pole-length wire harnesses and other retrofit components, the Record Gazette reported, and the project will reuse existing concrete light poles, power conductors, electrical circuits and the lighting control system. The city has reported that verification of existing electrical systems is complete.
Musco says its LED systems typically reduce energy consumption by more than 50% compared with traditional metal halide lamps and use specialized optics to limit spill light and glare in surrounding neighborhoods. A Musco project example documents a 56% energy reduction at a South Dakota school; that result is not a measurement or forecast for Beaumont. The lighting equipment will be purchased through the Sourcewell cooperative purchasing contract, while the playground equipment will be purchased through the OMNIA Partners contract. Cooperative purchasing agreements like these let California public agencies satisfy competitive bidding mandates while benefiting from pre-negotiated national volume discounts, and they provide access to established government pricing and contract terms while reducing administrative time and costs, according to Musco Sports Lighting.
How the Purchases Are Funded
The equipment purchases will be funded by capital improvement program projects, including savings from the sports park field lighting and field expansion project, which the city reports has $818,497 available. Of that, $439,222 is available for the Beaumont Sports Park playground purchase, including its 5% contingency. The sports park lighting project carries a $410,000 allocation with maximum purchasing authority of $300,040 including contingency, while the Wildflower Park playground project has a $500,000 allocation with maximum purchasing authority of $282,317 including contingency.
The council authorized the city manager or a designee to issue purchase orders and approve increases of up to 5% per order, limited to documented equipment price increases, freight charges or tax adjustments. Importantly, this additional purchasing authority cannot be used to substantially expand the approved equipment scope, and the equipment purchases exclude installation, site work, playground surfacing, electrical work, restroom renovations and other construction expenses.
The Beaumont Sports Park playground and lighting installation will instead be folded into a comprehensive sports park improvement project that also includes restroom renovations, with the city reporting that plans and specifications are nearing completion. Beaumont anticipates advertising that comprehensive project for competitive bids this fall. The Wildflower Park playground installation will be procured through a separate competitive bidding process under applicable law and city purchasing requirements, and construction costs for both projects will be charged to applicable capital improvement projects, subject to funding, contracting and approval requirements.
A City Straining to Keep Pace With Growth
The investment arrives as Beaumont contends with rapid population growth. U.S. Census Bureau estimates indicate the city's population reached 60,835 in July 2025, marking a 14.7% increase since April 2020 and making it the third-fastest-growing California city with more than 50,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That amounts to nearly 7,800 new residents in five years. San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency regional planning data show Beaumont gained more than 16,000 residents between 2010 and 2020, while neighboring Banning saw virtually flat population growth over the same decade, underscoring Beaumont's role as the primary driver of demographic expansion in the Pass area.
