I live in the neighbourhood and I visit Matthew park in a daily basis because my granddaughter enjoys it very much.
In general, it is a well maintained park with lots of attractions for all type of activities...
For kids, the splash pad is particularly entertaining.
Also, for the year round, the slides/swings area in the south-west corner is welcomed.
I have a concern though with this slides/swings spot: early this year (starting around March 2019 for the record), ample restoration work began to the flooring, which started to deteriorate last couple of years.
The intention is wonderful, however the result is awful!
Although the ground subfloor was carefully restored the actual surfacing soft material technical solution is a disaster!
Instead of the general soft material sponge-like method used in most of the playgrounds (which can be seen on the splash pad a couple of feet away), the extremely poor technical solution of "soft tiles" is used instead. The big problem with this (and this shows an enormous lack of jugement from the designer of this renovation) is that the soft tiles material (which is completely different from the sponge-like material I was mentioning above), absorbs the sun heat so much that you cannot walk bear feet on it. Kids get severe burns as the adults do as well!!
Aside of that, I can't see the tiles going through the Canadian winter and not starting to peel off (the size of the tiles is about 10 sqf).
Moreover, the tile colors choice is tasteless (and especially dark color which absorbs even more the sun heat).
All in all, although the intention was great, the result is a complete disaster! And on top of that, after 6 months of decommissioning of this playground, the facility is still out of order since is still surrounded by construction fence (removed occasionally in places by parents eager to offer their kids their "stolen" playground) and construction equipment without any notification as when the thing will be finished.
Passing by the playground, I was asking the workers, in the early stages, when the renovation will be ready, and the response was "...by mid May"...since then, I've lost the confidence in the Vaughan/Woodbridge "Parks and Recreations" business...this is a very bad mark since our tax money is wasted! read more