It's a grand opening.

Ten years in the making.

Tomorrow, the city of Lexington officially opens Gatton Park on the town branch.

The ten acre park features an amphitheater, splashpad playground, walking trails, public art, and more.

The park's executive director talks about the grand opening and the ten year journey to get to it.

When we open our doors at 1130 and then the official ribbon cutting will take place on the spin for a great lawn and the stage.

At 12 p.m., it'll be a brief ceremony where we cut the ribbon and a few speech and speakers, and then we open the park.

And there'll be ongoing performances on the stage starting at 115 all the way to 930 that night.

All local, regional and Kentucky acts.

We really wanted to make sure we showcased our local talent on the first day.

And then, at the other end of the park, there'll be pop up dancers every half hour, and so that'll be fun.

And then there's just a lot of family friendly activity throughout the day.

Planned by our nonprofit partners.

A project like this is a roller coaster.

I mean, there's ups and downs, there's winds, there's things that feel like losses.

And then there's also breakthroughs.

And, and so thinking about all of those times, I really believe that in any time we kind of had to pause and rethink things or make shifts every time I truly believe that we fine tune the the plans and it ended up better.

But it wasn't always easy and it wasn't always comfortable.

But, in the end, I think it it made a difference in the type of project, even those hard times.

I've been working on it for ten years, so almost half way in that time period was Covid and the pandemic.

We certainly didn't know how that was going to impact, a project like this.

And for a while, I think it slowed things down just slightly.

We ended up making up ground and stayed on track.

But, I think like so many things, initially that was a difficult time.

But in the end, I think people learned to appreciate and value public spaces from that experience.

For more on tomorrow's grand opening, go to Gatton park.org.