Before the pandemic ever entered anyone's vocabulary, Chattanooga Fire Department Captain Skyler Phillips had one idea stuck in his head. His son Noah is on the autism spectrum, and Phillips wanted a playground where Noah could play the way any other kid plays, without the sensory overload or the physical barriers that most playgrounds quietly build in. He picked Jack Benson Heritage Park in East Brainerd, the neighborhood park most families already knew from birthday parties and dog walks, and started pushing.
That was 2017. The playground opened this past Saturday, September 12, 2026.
If you have lived near East Brainerd Road or Jenkins Road for any stretch of that time, you already know the park went through phases. There was the years-long quiet where nothing visible happened. Then there was the fundraising push. Then the equipment trucks showed up. Then the whole thing seemed to stall out again. What actually happened during those gaps explains more about how this neighborhood gets things built than the ribbon cutting itself does.
What Actually Opened
The finished playground, officially called the Harvesting Inclusive Playground, is built around a farm theme and spans close to 17,000 square feet once you add up its two age zones. That figure runs larger than the 15,000 to 16,000 square foot estimates published back in 2024, when the project was still in the planning stage.
The layout breaks down like this:
- A 6,000 square foot area built for ages 2 to 5, which local officials describe as the only municipal play space of its kind in Hamilton County for that age group
- An 11,000 square foot area for ages 5 to 12
- 100 percent accessibility across every ground-level and elevated structure, which goes beyond standard ADA minimums rather than just meeting them
That last point is the one worth sitting with. Most playgrounds hit ADA compliance by making sure a wheelchair can reach the perimeter. This one was designed so a child using a wheelchair, a child with sensory sensitivities, and a child with no mobility limitations at all can end up on the same elevated structure at the same time. As of late 2024, Chattanooga's city parks director noted that only three parks in the entire city and county system were built to that standard. Heritage Park is now one of them, and it is by far the largest.
Why It Took Nine Years
Here is where the story stops being a press release and starts being useful to know if you actually live near this park.
The 2017 idea sat mostly dormant until COVID hit in 2020, which paused it for years. When momentum picked back up in 2024, the funding came together in pieces, not from one source writing one check. Tennessee state representative Esther Helton-Haynes secured a $250,000 state grant that spring. The Kiwanis Club of East Brainerd took point on actually building the thing. By that October, Hamilton County had committed $800,000, and the project's cost had climbed from an initial $1.2 million estimate to more than $2 million. Even with the county's contribution, organizers were still short roughly $260,000, some of which they closed with commemorative brick sales and a jail bail-out fundraiser. PlayCore, a locally based playground equipment company, cut $400,000 off its own portion to help close the gap.
By the end of 2024, the first truckload of equipment had arrived and the hope was an opening by spring 2025.
Then the ground got in the way. Construction hit an unexpected shelf of limestone in 2025, delaying the project a second time. What was supposed to be a spring 2025 opening slipped by roughly a year and a half. The finished playground carries a total price tag around $2.5 million, with $2 million of that coming from combined public funding once every grant, county allocation, and fundraiser is added up.
None of that delay was neglect. It was what it actually costs, in time and patched-together dollars, to build something that exceeds the legal minimum in a county that had only built three of these before.
The Rest of the Park Didn't Sit Still Either
If your mental picture of Heritage Park is still "the one with the dog park that's had construction fencing up forever," it is worth updating that picture entirely.
While the playground was underway, the park also finished a $1.68 million parking lot project built around permeable pavement, a stormwater management approach designed to let rain soak back into the ground instead of running off. It is not the kind of upgrade that shows up in a photo, but it is the kind that keeps a heavily used park from turning into standing water every time it rains hard, which matters if you are the one pushing a stroller across the lot.
The rest of what residents already come for is still there and unchanged. The 22-acre park still has its dog park split into separate small and large dog areas, with double-gated entry and agility equipment for the dogs who want it. The walking trails still loop past the wetlands and tree-lined sections that make the park a legitimate stop even if you do not have kids or a dog. The Don Eaves Heritage House Arts and Civic Center still hosts markets and concerts throughout the year, alongside the private events it is rented out for. The new playground and parking lot did not replace any of that. They got added to it.
What a Saturday Here Looks Like Now
The practical version of all this is simple. East Brainerd families now have a reason to make a full morning of Heritage Park instead of a quick playground stop. Walk the new play area with younger kids first, since the farm-themed structures are close to the parking lot Phillips and his team spent nine years fighting for. Loop over to the dog park if you brought the family dog along, since it sits within the same grounds. If lunch is next on the list, Mojo Burrito is within easy walking distance, along with a nearby ice cream shop and donut spot that regulars mention pairing with a park visit. The park has also hosted occasional movie nights and seasonal festivals over the years, so it is worth checking what is on the calendar before you go, since that is the kind of thing that changes month to month.
None of this required anyone to drive to a different part of the city. That has always been part of what East Brainerd offers, and the finished playground just gave residents one more specific reason to use the park they already had.
If you are the kind of person who tracks what changes in this neighborhood, house by house and park project by park project, that is exactly the local read Lawrence Team Homes spends its time on. We live and work in Greater Chattanooga, and East Brainerd is one of the areas we know block by block. If you ever want to talk through what is happening in this part of town, whether that is a new park or a new listing, talk to the Lawrence Team.
