Children play in the fountain under the tune of Uncle Wilbur, the fountain's tuba-playing statue.
/ FOX21: Kurt Story
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- Acacia Park is in the running for a $100,000 recreational grant in Coca-Cola's "America's Favorite Park" contest.
The contest, which started May 23, is asking people from all over the country to vote for their favorite park, which will then be restored and rebuilt to enhance activity areas in parks.
"Some of the money could be used for planning, just to get this park up to a modern standard," City councilmember Tim Leigh said. "We could use the money for water in the park, revitalize the playground area. There's just no end to demand for the money."
Leigh didn't deny there has been problems in the park before.
"Let's not sugarcoat the problem here," he said. "Of course the park's had a lot of problems here, a bad rep with homeless and people dealing drugs down here, and I think that's part of the overall plan for public safety is to make this park a safe place to come to once again."
Tyler Gniadek, a City of Colorado Springs safety monitor at the park, said the grant could help stop the problems at the park.
"It would definitely help it keep more clean because the thing is, we need more police officers down here, and it's really hard to do that throughout the day with the budget," Gniadek said. "That's one of the reasons I'm here. I call when I see drugs happening and just more money would help, more police officers would come here, and I think it would help clean the park up."
Currently, Acacia Park is in 95th place in the contest with about 1,500 votes. The lead park has about 5,800,000, but Leigh said it's not too late. There's still a month to vote, and you can vote as often as you'd like.
"If we can really get a lot of energy behind this, folks. That's money from Coca-Cola that we didn't have before, and anytime you can get free money from a coke company, bring it on," Leigh said.
There are two ways to vote in the contest. You can click here or you can also check in on the app, Foursquare. A Foursquare check-in is worth 100 votes.
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