Southwest Denver: Neighbors participate in planning for Westwood Park renovation. »
For years, the trees in the back corner of Westwood Park were known to shield drug dealers and prostitutes.
The park didn’t have lights, a covered picnic table or even a sign indicating it existed. It was mostly an empty field of grass bordered by the backyard fences of the surrounding homes. Some people who had lived in the neighborhood for decades didn’t even know it existed. Those who did hesitated to send their kids there to play. Instead of an asset, the park had become a problem.
The southwest Denver community, which is primarily Latino and has a large immigrant population, demanded a change. They wanted a better park, and they wanted to be part of its design. In 2013, leaders with grassroots organization Westwood Unidos started knocking on doors and asking a simple question: What do you want in your park? In 2015, the organization won part of a $2.7 million grant from Great Outdoors Colorado and started holding community meetings where residents could plan their park.
“We were worried about security in the park,” Norma Brambila, who lives nearby and is coordinator of safety with Westwood Unidos, said in Spanish. “We wanted a park where we could come together, and decided to activate the park we already had.”
Five years from those first conversations, residents of the Westwood community gathered Saturday to celebrate the opening of the reinvented space. The giggles and shrieks of playing kids returned to the once-forgotten park. Parents chatted under a recently constructed gazebo before a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Michael Hancock.
“The city of Denver didn’t come and say, ‘We’re going to build this park,’ ” said Scott Gilmore, deputy manager of parks at Denver Parks and Recreation. “The community said, ‘We want this park.’ ”
A number of parents remembered playing in the woods as children and said they wanted natural objects in the park so their kids could have the same experience. So the park planners included large rocks and tree trunks in the playground. The group also wanted to reflect the Mexican heritage that many of them share. So the gazebo in the center of the park was constructed with wroughtiron detailing, like those common in the town squares south of the border.
City Councilman Paul Lopez, who represents
grew up a few blocks from the park and marveled at what it became.
“When I played in this park, there was nothing,” he said Saturday. “The kind of activity that was here you didn’t want to be around as a kid.”
The park is only one part of Westwood Unidos’ plan to get people outside and live healthier lives.
The organization is creating a pedestrian-friendly path, called the Via Verde, between the parks in the neighborhood.
A group of teenagers led by 16-year-old Sayuri Toribio runs a bike shop where repairs and rentals are free so that more people can go for a ride.
They host Zumba and other exercise classes to help combat obesity and diabetes, serious health concerns in the community. They’ve lobbied for healthy snacks in area schools and successfully reinstated a nearby bus line after it was discontinued.
Unidos executive director Paul Casey hopes other neighborhoods can use Westwood as a model for community engagement. It was truly an efneighborhood, fort of the people, he said.
The neighborhood cheered as Brambila, the safety coordinator with the organization, stood in front of the pavilion they had enwestwood visioned. She didn’t need the microphone to speak to the crowd.
“Unity makes strength!” she yelled.
“Vamos!” they cried back