Forest Lawn community celebrates opening of park, basketball courts and inclusive playground

The back side of the Forest Lawn Community Centre has been transformed from a large and often empty field into a vibrant and treed seating area, basketball court and inclusive playground.

The president of the local community association says the final design is exactly what he imagined when he started advocating for a new community park.

"When you see kids here running and happy, and you come at night and you find over 50 kids, you know that this is the community they actually wanted to live in," said Gar Gar.

He says few in the neighbourhood believed it would ever come to be.

"This is actually showing that those people in Greater Forest Lawn count ... it's a dream come true," Gar said.

The park was officially unveiled to the public Thursday with speeches from a number of representatives from the organizations that helped finance the construction of this project, including the project manager, Parks Foundation Calgary.

"There's a huge unmet need for park spaces and in Forest Lawn there really wasn't a vibrant community hub that had recreational and gathering spaces for everybody," said Sheila Taylor of the Parks Foundation.

Other partners include the government of Alberta, the City of Calgary, Sofina, the Calgary Flames Foundation and Alberta Blue Cross. 

Taylor says the project started about three years ago as just an idea by the community.

She says its often challenging to go beyond that, so that's where the Parks Foundation steps in to help create a plan and find donors.

The total cost of the space was more than $1.6 million.

The gathering space, picnic tables and basketball court cost $970,000, while the inclusive playground cost $700,000.

Some of the kids who belong to a youth group that's run out of the community centre say they never used to play much in the old outdoor space.

"It was terrible, because we had nothing to do, all our friends would hang out for 20 minutes because we do nothing fun, but now we just hang out for like 10 hours, 9 hours … this place is so nice," said Abdul Rahim Sliman, 11.

"It's amazing, I come here everyday. Its like the nicest basketball court in Forest Lawn," said Rowan Cumming, 12.

"This is just such a good place to be in, because like the community and all that is so good," said Grayson Landrie, 13.

Gar says he can already see how this new space has boosted people's pride in the community.

"They used to say ghetto, but now no one says ghetto," said Gar.

While the gathering space and basketball courts are now open, the playground is set to open later this fall.