Arlington County, where I live, is famous for being the home of the million-dollar bus stop. But now we are also the proud home of the $2.5 million playground - pictured above in a photo I took just before it opened last week.
Best of all, the new playground is no better than the old one it replaced on the same site! Many neighborhood parents (myself included) think it’s worse. The old one could have been refurbished, if necessary, for a small fraction of the cost of building the new.
As an extra bonus, cost overruns and construction delays ensured that the playground site was closed for over 2 years - including most of the COVID pandemic (just when it was most needed).
A quintessential combination of building back worse and making wasteful spending great again!