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The community gathered at Noble E. Young Park in Tyler on Saturday afternoon to celebrate renovations.

The updated park features new restrooms and a new art mural, a new parking lot and location, a 1-mile long, 8-foot-wide walking trail, picnic tables and benches, a pavilion, a children’s bike park, and an outdoor gym.

Leanne Robinette, director of Parks and Recreations for the City of Tyler, introduced the event and also helped participate in the ribbon cutting. She said she was excited to see this work completed.

“I feel so proud that we were able to do this at a park that really needed some love,” said Robinette. “This park hasn’t been touched in a really long time. It was in bad shape when we started this project. I’m really excited for not only our staff, but for the community to come out and take some pride in their neighborhood park and utilize it in the way that they want to.”

While this phase of the renovations has been completed, Robinette knows there’s much more to be done and is looking forward to that next phase, which will include redoing the basketball court among other improvements.

The bike park addition was a collaboration between the city and the local bike club.

“We had gone to Bentonville Arkansas which is kind of a bicycle mecca, and saw that they had created this children’s playground for bicycles,” said Bill Lewis, president of the Tyler Bicycle Club. “We came back and met with Leanne and pitched the idea. The bike club sent them to Bentonville, they had a big clinic there. We had given them the vision, from the bike club. We did the layout. We are thrilled. The city has worked so great with us.”

The children’s bike park has different ramps and areas for kids to ride in an open space, so their parents and families can watch them easily.

“It’s not just a park to go ride on a sidewalk,” said Lewis. “There’s jumps, there’s humps, there’s all the different terrain. We have a tunnel to ride through, we have a pump track for the kids as well. We are thrilled. We feel like this is going to be such a jewel in the parks department.”

Lewis also mentioned the possibility of expanding the idea of the children’s bike park to other locations.

“As this vision has unfolded and become a reality, we have more visions of being able to have a bike park up by the Glass Recreational Center, up in North Tyler,” Lewis said. “We have some fantastic land that’s available up there. The goal is with our bike lanes is to connect all these so families could ride to the parks and then be able to explore them.”

The community gathered at Saturday’s ribbon cutting was excited to see this project completed.

“This is a great project for District 2,” said Councilman Broderick McGee. “The transformation of Noble E. Young Park is a collaboration between the city, and the neighbors who spend a lot of time in this park learning to ride a bike, playing with friends, and spending time outside. This project also opens more of Noble to our community with our new entrance and parking lot, providing easier access to visitors as well as emergency services.”