Things got a little soggy on Saturday, May 23 as city officials donned plastic rain coats to cut the ribbon on the splash pad at the new North Cottonwood Commons Park in Farmington. Water rained down on them from a tree sculpture while anxious kids and some adults started running through the squirts of water. 

Farmington city leaders get soaked when the water is turned on at the new splash pad.

 The splash pad is just the beginning, the park boasts the tallest playground slide along the Wasatch Front and the city’s first ninja warrior course. In addition to the park, food trucks are available to grab a bite.

“This park was built to replace a park that was taken for the West Davis Corridor,” said Farmington City Manager Brigham Mellor. “We acquired this property in 2018. It took about a year to design and then we started construction. All the resources that we used to pay for this park are from our deal with UDOT and impact fees.”

Mellor said the city built it so it would be a cool community gathering space. “We’re looking to have concerts where you get 200-300 people to show up. We’ll just have local bands. We’re probably going to get that set up starting next year. That’s kind of the plan.”

This will be sort of the backyard for a lot of people, he said. “There are some of these developments that are going to be surrounding here. You know 5,000 people will live in this area so we wanted to make sure that it was a really nice park that they could come to.”

With all this construction around this will be the main gathering place, said Mellor. “It’s the center piece for everything. We have a greenway planned that will go the whole way up to the north and it will go all the way to the south.”

That’s why they built the bridge that goes out to the wetlands, he said. “It’s a cool walking path that basically spans all of west Farmington. It’s next to other trails so there’s the energy and everything else.”

It was built so it could be used in all seasons, Mellor said. “So this park, even in winter, we had a lot of people out here.”

Some of this was wetlands up until recently, he said. “This park would have been a lot easier if it sat just five feet higher. That would have been great because everything would have drained. But that’s why we built this park where it is. It also acts as the water drainage for all these developments around here.”

When there’s a big storm, and it’s happened a few times already, all that water runs into where the water basins are, said Mellor. “You want to meter your water going in. You want to be able to detain your water so it doesn’t flood people’s homes.”

Mellor said the water at the splash pad is totally recycled. “That’s why we have the health department come out and they’ll check on it and we check because it’s treated water.”

It also has sensors that when the wind blows more than 10 miles an hour certain elements will shut down so the water isn’t getting blown off the splash pad, he said. “Then when it gets to 20 miles an hour the whole splash pad shuts down. Nothing is operational if the wind’s too high.”

The splash pad automatically shuts off periodically and kids have to run and tap the button and then it will turn back on, said Mellor. 

The name North Cottonwood Commons Park has special meaning, Mellor said. “It pays homage to Farmington’s original name when the community was settled in 1847.”