A 10-foot climbable lizard and a 36-foot upside-down ice cream cone slide will anchor Cincinnati's next playground at Sawyer Point. The design, released Sept. 10, celebrates a piece of Hyde Park history that started on Torrence Court in 1951.

The city unveiled plans for "Lazarus Lizard Landing," a replacement for the 1,000 Hands Playground destroyed in the 2024 I-471 bridge fire, WKRC first reported. The project is expected to cost more than $2 million, funded through a mix of public and private dollars. The city has set a tentative 2028 opening.

The playground's name honors the Lazarus lizard, a European wall lizard species that has called Hyde Park home for 75 years. In 1951, George Rau Jr., the 10-year-old stepson of Fred Lazarus III, smuggled six to 10 of the lizards home from a family vacation at Lake Garda in northern Italy, according to Ohio State University Extension. He released them at the family's home on Torrence Court. The lizards thrived. Torrence Court is still sometimes called "Lizard Hill," and the species eventually earned legal protection under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 1531 alongside native reptiles, a rare distinction for a non-native animal.

The playground's design turns that history into a play structure. Parks Director Jason Barron described the concept as a scene frozen mid-chaos: a boy named George drops a sock carrying his lizard and his ice cream cone, and visiting kids are "shrunk down to play amongst the ensuing chaos."

"Our goal was to create a playground that sparks imagination and creativity and is truly unlike anything else in our region," Barron said, according to WKRC.

The new playground will sit a few hundred feet from the original 1,000 Hands site. That location will be converted to landscaping to help prevent future incidents, WKRC reported in January 2026.

No groundbreaking date or public meeting on the design has been announced. The city has not detailed how the $2 million-plus cost will be split between public and private sources.