IRVINE – The defenders of Adventure Playground may not have their mud-filled, fort-building playground back, but the grassroots group got something, and that’s got them excited six years after the city closed the playground and nearly bulldozed it.

Irvine City Council voted unanimously Tuesday for a $2.9 million plan to reopen Adventure Playground in the city’s University neighborhood. The original playground, open from 1976 to 2008, featured mud pits and free play. This one will be dotted with climbing stumps, a climbing forest, a water pump, a garden, slides, a concrete path and large areas of open space – some of it rubberized.

“It’s been a long time coming, and we’re just ready to build,” said Alex Hillenbrand, leader of the Defend Adventure Playground group and a former playgroundgoer and worker. Expect to see Hillenbrand and his now 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Hallie, at the playground when it opens in September 2015.

Hillenbrand said the new plan represents a blank canvas and is, perhaps, more in line with the the spirit of an “Adventure Playground” that fosters free-thinking imaginative play rather than cookie-cutter plastic play sets. Those stumps? Hillenbrand said they’ll be arranged in a way that children will be able to string ropes and fabric between them to make bridges, tents, etc.

The 1.7-acre park has been fenced in since 2008, hiding aging shacks and growing weeds inside.

The $2.9 million cost was already budgeted. It was another reason the playground’s ardent supporters favored the plan, knowing any proposal that would cost more might face opposition, especially in an election year.

Early versions that included a pond, zip line and amphitheater, among other features, would have cost $1 million to $2 million more.

Kevin Trussell, chair of the city’s Community Services Commission, had spent hours in an April meeting with his fellow commissioners going line by line in the playground’s proposed design plan to bring the cost to $3.9 million, versus $4.9 million, while keeping certain features, including the proposed pond and zip line. The plan brought to the City Council on Tuesday eliminated the pond.

“In our drought, maybe that’s a good thing,” Trussell said Tuesday after the vote. The zip line was gone, too, but Trussell hopes other features can be added later.

“I’m happy that we’re going forward with something,” he said.

Contact the writer: 949-864-6371 or kpierceall@ocregister.com