SALISBURY — For the past few months, parts of the playground at Bell Tower Green Park have been marked off with pieces of tarp and traffic cones making it unusable. This may be inconvenient for those who want to enjoy all aspects of the park, but it looks like Salisbury is starting to come up with a solution that will fix the problem.

According to Salisbury Parks and Recreation Director Nick Aceves, the playground equipment was incorrectly installed so they had to close it off immediately once they discovered the issue last summer. Normally, if the city owned the park they would reach out to the playground company who built it to fix it, but since Bell Tower Green was gifted to the city of Salisbury back in 2021, the process is more complicated.

“So, with this playground it’s a little different because it was gifted to the city. The private Bell Tower Green Inc. Group still owns the warranties because they can’t transfer the warranties,” Aceves said.

All the separate entities that are involved with the park like the designer, playground company, Bell Tower Green, the city of Salisbury, and the park’s contractor need to meet to coordinate a strategy on the best way repair the equipment, which is easier said than done.

“Even the turf is a different contractor. It’s almost like all those pieces have to line up and we all have to be on the same page to move to the next step,” Aceves said.

Even though there have been logistical delays, everyone seems to be in a general agreement on how to proceed. A plan is being put together by the playground company in the next few weeks for it be fully fixed around late spring. The company will then present that plan to the Bell Tower Green Advisory Committee for approval, where any suggestions can be added and questions answered.

Aceves mentioned that the faulty construction could have had potential dangers if not detected right away and that future plans for the playground will address this.

“Luckily, nothing negative has happened, but we’ve noticed it does generate some heat on that side of the hill. So, we’re going to do some redesign to help with all that.”