Scramble Alley's Next Chapter Runs Through a 2024 Survey, a Grant Match, and a Parks Master Plan

"We were princesses and castles, we were superheroes, saving the city," Ryn King said in a report by NewsChannel 9, describing the wooden playground behind Soddy-Daisy's city hall and why a swing set and a splinter-prone climbing structure matter enough to organize over.

King is secretary of Project Scramble Alley 2.0, one arm of a grassroots push that gathered more than 600 signatures this summer to stop the city from tearing down Scramble Alley. The playground has stood behind the Municipal Building on Dayton Pike since volunteers built it by hand sometime in the mid-1990s, and on September 8 the Board of Commissioners voted to remove it for good. If you've followed the Facebook threads, you already know the broad strokes: a beloved 30-year-old structure, a safety inspection that filled pages with photos of rotting wood, a city that says it tried and a community that says it wasn't tried hard enough.

Timing adds useful context here. The city asked residents about Scramble Alley's future in 2024, and the answers that came back leaned toward removal, so the September 8 vote followed a direction the survey had already pointed to.

What the 2024 survey showed

The city sent a survey to residents in 2024 asking whether Scramble Alley should be repaired or redesigned, and the results surprised the people who sent it. Most respondents said it was time to tear it down. The survey preceded Scramble Alley's closure and the formation of the Facebook group and Project Scramble Alley 2.0 by about two years.

The petition drive that picked up 600 signatures this summer came after the city already had those survey results in hand. The city's own messaging around that survey period put a number on the repair option: restoring the playground to its original wooden condition would run somewhere between $150,000 and $175,000, with community fundraising needed to cover it. That was the lowest repair estimate cited here.

How the project estimates varied

By June 2026, when the closure was formally announced, city figures were already telling a different story. WDEF reported that adding new play structures at Veterans Park instead would cost around $120,000, while building an entirely new playground at Scramble Alley itself was estimated at $350,000 or more. That same month, city staff gave commissioners a wider range: repairing the existing structure would run $200,000 to $300,000, and a full wooden rebuild, the kind that would actually replace what Scramble Alley currently is, would cost $700,000 to $800,000. City Manager Burt Johnson used the same $750,000 to $800,000 figure for a new wooden playground.

The September 8 vote settled demolition, not design. That question got picked back up at a follow-up commission meeting later in the month, where Johnson told commissioners he'd gotten ballpark quotes from Game Time, a playground equipment manufacturer, for a smaller, simpler structure: $300,000 to $500,000. That's not a rebuild of Scramble Alley's wooden maze. It's a different kind of playground entirely, and Vice Mayor Mark Penney said as much at that meeting, asking that whatever goes in be designed to feel specific to Soddy-Daisy rather than something generic pulled from a catalog.

Line up those numbers in order and you get somewhere useful. The original repair estimate that circulated when the petition started was $150,000 to $175,000. The full wooden rebuild commissioners priced out in June was $700,000 to $800,000. What the city is actually pursuing now, per that later September meeting, sits in between at $300,000 to $500,000, for something that won't look like the playground anyone is fighting to save. The number that started the fight and the number the city is working from now aren't the same conversation.

How Soddy-Daisy is approaching playground funding

None of this happened because Soddy-Daisy wasn't trying to fund it. The city applied twice for a BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Playground Grant, a private grant aimed at exactly this kind of project, and got turned down both times. The city has not secured funding through that grant.

The path Johnson raised at that later September meeting instead is a state Local Parks and Recreation Fund grant, which works as a 50/50 match. If the city gets it, Soddy-Daisy would need to contribute half of the eligible project cost. A city needs a current parks master plan on file to apply, and Soddy-Daisy did not yet have one. In June, the city said it was working with a consultant on the plan; three months later, commissioners said it still needed to be completed before a grant application could proceed.

Holly Park offers a useful comparison, because Soddy-Daisy has already secured county matching funds once for a different park. Holly Park, the city's fishing and boating spot on Soddy Creek, received a $250,000 match from Hamilton County's small-town park grant program back in 2025, the same round that funded projects in Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain, Red Bank, Lakesite, and Walden. The city's newly adopted FY2026-27 budget folds a playground replacement into the same $500,000 parks line item that's paying for Holly Park's dock and landscaping work, with the county reimbursing half. City Manager Johnson has already cautioned commissioners that the full list of planned projects, playground replacement included, might not all fit inside that total.

The county funding mechanism used for Holly Park is also part of Scramble Alley's funding picture, alongside other projects in the parks budget. A state grant could provide additional funds, but the city first needs to complete its parks master plan.

What this actually means if you're in Soddy-Daisy right now

Scramble Alley is coming down, following the September 8 vote and a 2024 survey that leaned toward removal. What's still open is what replaces it, when, and whether it stretches the shared parks budget thin enough that something else, dock work at Holly Park or landscaping or parking, gets scaled back to make room.

In the meantime, the playground isn't the only option in town. Veterans Park has its own playground alongside a walking track and two lighted ball fields, and Commissioner Everett pointed out at that later September meeting that school playgrounds around the city remain open to the public too. Neither replicates what Scramble Alley was built to be, a wooden maze kids could get genuinely lost in, but they're there now while the next chapter gets written.

If you want to weigh in before the design gets locked, the commission meetings where all of this keeps surfacing are open to the public, and the city has posted updates through its own site and Facebook page. Those channels can help you follow upcoming votes.

Soddy-Daisy keeps changing in small, specific ways like this, one commission meeting at a time. If you want to follow local developments, the Dustin Mullins Team tracks these shifts as part of covering the Soddy-Daisy area closely, and we're glad to point you toward what comes next on the city's agenda.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.