Story, photo by Steve Nash – Special Contributor to BrownwoodNews.com

EARLY – Coming to the Early Town Center: an all-inclusive playground, and at Christmastime, a 30-foot-tall artificial Christmas tree that will be installed on the Boardwalk.

Early City Administrator Tony Aaron updated city council members Tuesday night on plans for the playground from Cunningham Recreation and turf for the playground from Forever Lawn MidTex.

Aaron was not ready to ask the council to approve agreements with the two companies because final numbers are not yet in.

“The Town Center playground is an item that we’ve been working on for a considerable amount of time,” Aaron said. “I updated the council on our progress. We are trying to keep a budget (for the playground) of around $300,000 with installation.

“The turf will be in the neighborhood of about $100,000. So the total project cost is somewhere around $400,000. We do have some sponsorships that are contributing to that, and the mayor’s going to announce those sponsorships as well as the design and the concept of what this playground will be at the State of the City.”

Aaron was referring to Mayor Bob Mangrum’s State of the City address, which will be Friday, April 17, at Howard Payne University’s Mabee Center.

“We do anticipate the construction to begin the summer of this year and be open quickly after that,” Aaron said of the playground.

Council members did take action pertaining to the artificial Christmas tree, ratifying earlier action by the Early Municipal Development District to purchase the tree.

The cost will be about $27,000, Aaron said.

“That tree will be a 30-foot-tall community tree with ornaments and lighting,” Aaron said. “We’ve traditionally held our tree lighting ceremony at the intersection of 183 South in front of City Hall. We’ll still decorate that, but the plan is to move the official tree lighting to the Boardwalk.

“Obviously with our Holly Jolly Tree Trail, that’s the best place for it to be. So it’ll be a good addition to the Holly Jolly Tree Trail and what better time to look at buying Christmas trees than after the Christmas holiday when they all start going on sale? So we’ve taken advantage of some of those discounts.”

In other business, council members:

• Discussed on first reading a $13,281 municipal development district grant to Brownwood Janitorial for improvements. The item will require a second reading at the next council meeting before council members can approve the grant, which will help fund renovations and improvements to the business.

• Approved an $8,875 municipal development district grant to Wes Copeland.

“He’s a private individual who has a development that he’s working on,” Aaron said. “It was approved for a property that he has under construction and he’s going to be demoing an old building.

“That’s a 50 percent match to that project. He has some development plans that have yet to be revealed, but the council and MDD felt that demoing out an old structure that’s substandard was a good step in the right direction, regardless of what the development that he’s going to put on there is. But there will be more information to come about that later on, I’m sure, in his time.”