The fate of Kids Kove – the beloved play structure at Grand Traverse County’s Civic Center – will soon be much clearer.

An inspection of the structure by the county’s insurance liability carrier is slated to take place this Saturday, says Alisa Kroupa, president of the county’s Park and Recreation Commission.

Kroupa says the commission had hoped to have the inspection completed before its meeting Thursday (6pm at the Governmental Center) – but that was not possible. The structure was last inspected in 2011 as part of a comprehensive inspection of all the county’s park facilities.

Debate about what to do about the 18-year-old structure first surfaced in May, when Carter’s Kids contacted the Parks and Recreation Department and offered to build a $60,000 “tot lot” at the Civic Center. Carter’s Kids is a nonprofit founded by TC native Carter Oosterhouse that builds community parks and playgrounds in neighborhoods around the country. The first such project in his hometown, the playground at Greilickville Harbor Park, was completed in 2010.

Because the replacement of Kids Kove (at an estimated cost of $113,000) is identified in the department’s capital improvement plan, the department proposed leveraging the $60,000 donation and $9,000 already in the fund to re-develop the entire playground.

That idea caught the attention of community members involved in its original construction.

“We were stunned and shocked when we heard Kids Kove could potentially get torn down,” says Lynn Sutherland, who spent two years as the project’s coordinator back in the mid 1990s.

With her kids now well beyond playground age, Sutherland hadn’t visited Kids Kove in a long time, but says she was saddened on a recent visit to see it hasn’t been maintained.

The playground was built in 1996 and designed completely by local children, according to a Kids Kove – Preserve It Facebook page and an associated website. The children submitted drawings of what they wanted to see: dinosaurs, a ship, fire engines, a playhouse, a stage and a phone that would stretch across the playground – and all of those ideas were built into the park. The construction cost $125,000, was funded entirely by private donations, and built by more than 2,500 volunteers.

A small contingent of that original Kids Kove committee, including Sutherland, has re-formed and plans to attend Thursday’s meeting.

“We have a lot of knowledge about the structure,” she adds. “I have no doubt it can be saved and maintained. We just hope to make the community aware and show the commission that there are people who want to save it.”

She adds that the group would love to see Carter’s Kids build something at the Civic Center, just not in place of Kids Kove. “We’d be happy to help with that project … and maybe they could help us out with ours.”

Adds Kroupa, “The commission has expressed interest in renovating Kids Kove,” but first it needs to know if it is worth the time, effort and money of this group – something the inspection will reveal.

Kroupa learned last week that national standards for playground structures changed in 1997, a year after Kids Kove opened.

“So it almost immediately fell out of code,” she says. “It is grandfathered in, but we’d like it to meet code and be insurance compliant. The best case scenario is for Carter’s Kids to build a tot lot in an alternative location and for Kids Kove to be renovated.”