The Roanoke Rapids Parks and Recreation Department has been awarded an $83,000 Kate B. Reynolds grant for the remaining improvements to Ledgerwood Field.

Parks and Recreation Director John Simeon said today the grant is expected to be funded July 1 and the city hopes to begin work in either the latter part of July or the first of August.

The grant will fund playground equipment and a picnic shelter.

The playground equipment will be for children ages 5 to 12. The equipment, Simeon said, “Will have a fitness aspect to it. We’re concentrating more on the physical fitness side to offset childhood obesity. The components will challenge kids in a fun way and in a fitness atmosphere.”

The equipment, he said, will not be the traditional type of playground equipment. “It will entail forms of balancing, climbing and crawling instead of the traditional see-saws and slides.”

The picnic shelter will allow the field to be used in the school district’s free summer lunch program.

“This not only helps the Ledgerwood athletic complex,” said Simeon, but also, “the needs of the immediate neighborhood.”

Currently children in the neighborhood have to cross an often-busy Tenth Street for the playground equipment and picnic shelters at Emry Park. “Our hopes, between the neighborhood and the athletic complex, we should see very high usage numbers.”