By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Officials took another step Wednesday to ensure town facilities are accessible to those with special needs. 

The Board of Selectwomen approved an agreement to install a ground covering over sand at the new Compo Beach playground — the community-driven project approved last May — so all children will be able to comfortably access the equipment.

The material to be installed by Matta LLC will cover only parts of the ground in the play area, specifically where accessible playground equipment is to be installed. The material, manufactured in New Zealand, will cost $70,000 and will be paid for by donations, Police Chief Foti Koskinas told the selectwomen at their Wednesday meeting. Koskinas was representing the Compo Playground Organizing Committee as a volunteer, he said.

“The entire town has made an effort to take every possible approach for handicapped access,” Koskinas said, and making the playground more accessible is another important step. “I don’t believe there is a child in Westport who hasn’t benefitted from that playground,” he said.

Other efforts have been made recently to make town-owned facilities compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the Planning and Zoning Commission’s insistence that plans for a remodeled Inn at Longshore include an elevator. Although the original plans for the inn’s renovation included an elevator, it was removed as a cost savings. The P&Z, however, withheld final approval until the developers promised to restore an elevator to the project.

Another town project — the redesign of Parker Harding Plaza’s parking lot — in part was also based on a need to make a town facility compliant with ADA regulations, according to Public Works Director Peter Ratkiewich. Plans for that stalled project called for restriping the lot to make parking spaces larger and adding accessible spots.

At the selectwomen’s meeting, Koskinas acknowledged the accessible material to be installed in the Compo Beach playground is “a big-ticket item,” and somewhat experimental, although it has been used successfully elsewhere, he said. Although other playgrounds in Westport have accessible covering on the ground, the material used there would not be effective at the beach because of the sand, he said.

At the beach playground, sand builds up over time. “During storms, the area fills in, it doesn’t wash away,” Koskinas said. Several cubic feet of sand must occasionally be removed to maintain the play space, he said.

The accessible covering for the beach playground is expected to last six to 10 years, he said. “The warranty does have some limitations … I can’t tell you that it’s 100 percent, but we owe it to our handicapped in our area to at least give it a try.”

The new playground is a gift from the Westport Rotary Club, which initiated the project with a $100,000 grant to mark the club’s 100th anniversary. A similar grant was also donated by the Westport Police Foundation.

Additional donations to the playground project, including donations for fence pickets inscribed with donors’ names, can be made via the committee’s website.

Planners hope to start work on the project this spring.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.