Playgrounds in Randal Park will be able to protect kids from the sun after a fundraising effort was able to deliver the money to install new sunshades.

The sunshades have already been installed over two playgrounds on Lovett Avenue and one on Gamemaster Avenue, and hopefully they’ll prevent any unwanted trips to the store for aloe vera and encourage more time outside over the summer.

Katie Steuck is a Randal Park resident who helped get the funding for the sunshades.

“We’re thrilled,” Steuck said. “Everyone in the community is really happy that this got done.”

$36,500 was raised for the sunshade structures. $15,500 came from nearly 80 families in Randal Park, $11,000 was donated by the City of Orlando, and $10,000 came from Orlando Health, which is opening a three-story emergency room and medical pavilion in the area that is scheduled to open in the fall of 2020.

Orlando Health also hosted a party on June 25 to unveil the sunshades.

“This was a way for [Orlando Health] to give back to the community,” Steuck said. “And to start forming a relationship with the residents of Randal Park.”

The remainder of the project was funded through the Randal Park Community Development District.

Randal Park is a planned community of mostly single-family homes southeast of downtown Orlando, right off State Road 417. According to Steuck, the community consists of nearly 600 single-family homes and two hundred townhomes.

Orlando Health’s Randal Park location is planned to be 15 acres with a 42,000-square-foot emergency room, as a service of Orlando Regional Medical Center, with exam and treatment rooms, an imaging department, a lab, ambulance bays, a helipad, and parking infrastructure. 

Adjacent to that will be a 60,000-square-foot medical pavilion with physician and ancillary services.

The sunshades are sure to be very welcomed by visitors to Randal Park playgrounds, especially as hot as this summer has been. According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Florida’s average temperature of 78.8 degrees in June was the warmest on record since climate records began to be tracked in 1895.

Needless to say, the sunshades should come in handy to park-goers that do brave the heat.