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Kids Kove will get some finishing touches

MERRIMACK – Three months after the new and improved Kids Kove opened for business, volunteers will close off the Merrimack playground again later this month for some final touches.

The park, rebuilt by volunteers over one week in May, will be closed to the public Sept. 17 while student volunteers from Merrimack High School gather for sealing and staining, among other closing tasks.

It will re-open the following day, and project volunteers will gather again Monday, Sept. 19, for a formal dedication ceremony.

“This will be the final piece,” Pete Giacapuzzi, a town resident who led the volunteer effort, said last week. “We’ve been at this a long time. This will be the end .?.?. the ‘job well done.’”

With the facility aged and deteriorated, members of the town Rotary Club first proposed the rebuild in 2009, looking to replicate the original barn-raising effort that led to the playground in the early 1990s.

Project organizers spent two years raising nearly $100,000 in donations to fund the project, and in May, more than 400 volunteers gathered to rebuild the playground.

Together, they spent more than 65 hours, from May 18-22, preparing and installing new playground equipment, picnic tables and an expanded toddler play area, among other fully accessible facilities. And when they couldn’t complete the project in time, volunteers returned the following week to complete the work.

Volunteers held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the project May 22, and children were welcome to use the facility several days later.

“It went unbelievably well,” Giacapuzzi said at the time. “We couldn’t ask for more. The volunteers, no matter what they were asked to do, they did.”

Once the new sealing and staining is complete, volunteers will hold the dedication ceremony Sept. 19 at 5:30 p.m.

They will post new signs recognizing major donors, and honor the lead volunteers.

“It’s going to be a nice little ceremony,” Giacapuzzi said last week. “It’ll be a great way to finish it up.”

Jake Berry can be reached at 594-6402 or jberry@nashuatelegraph.com.