Urban athletes urge city to preserve ‘parkour paradise’
City officials worried over ‘social disorder’
Calgary parkour enthusiasts are urging the city to keep its concrete jungle park for its inner-city playground.
Downtown’s Century Park is inching closer to redevelopment as it nears the end of its life cycle.
The park, located between 7th and 8th avenues and 7th and 8th streets S.W., was created in 1975 to celebrate Calgary’s centennial. It was considered an urban oasis with ponds, waterfalls, wooden bridges and stylized concrete retaining walls.
While the city says the park is showing its age with rotting timber, cracking wooden decks and worn mechanical and electrical equipment, local park users want to see it saved.
“This park is this incredible hot spot for parkour,” said Steve Nagy, a Calgary enthusiast of the sport that involves negotiating obstacles in the quickest and most efficient manner possible by running, climbing and jumping.
“Those precast concrete structures are fantastic, they lend so many options for jumping around and things you can climb.”
Nagy says about three dozen people, ages 13 to about 25, meet weekly at the park to vault over picnic tables, flip over fence posts, and leap and run through the space.
“It is a wonderful location for practicing parkour. It is really becoming this incredible world-renowned location for practicing. We’ve been using it for years,” said Nagy.
“Younger kids who might not have the money to play hockey or go skiing, with parkour, you grab a pair of shoes and head out. It gives kids a ton of confidence, doing side flips, run as fast as they can — it’s really invigorating.”
While Nagy has been invited to the table for stake- holder talks with the city, he says he is holding out hope the main features will remain the same.
“We’re not completely discouraged by the idea of redevelopment of the park. But we’d like to see the same kind of brutalist architecture in place.”
From lunchtime picnickers to chess players to parkour athletes, many groups use the urban park. But it has raised some concerns with city officials.
“The biggest thing we see is that it’s become a bit of a magnet for social disorder,” said Kyle Ripley, the city’s parks and planning manager.
”We have to do something to open up the sight lines and encourage more positive use.”
Calgarians may get a look at the options as early as this spring.
“We had a number of concepts we’re looking at. We can take the existing park as you see it with minor modifications, we can remove the entire park to bare slate and start over. We’re looking at that full spectrum, the solution is likely in the middle of that spectrum.”
The design and budget — currently about $4 million — must go before city council for approval.
“We have a responsibility to ensure these parks are up to date and able to support the desired programming. That’s where Century Gardens falls a bit short,” he said.
“We want to make sure we’re working very closely with them so we get it right.”
The project to refresh the park has been in the works for years, Ripley said.
The city’s parkour community has been part of the stakeholder meetings, but they make up a relatively small group of users, the city says.
“It’s hard for us to take a premier urban park and dedicate it to one user group. We’re looking for that balance. It’s important for us to contemplate the risks associated with this on public land.”