The chain-link gates of Park Hill Park opened to the public for the first time Tuesday afternoon as Denver officials celebrated the city’s newest project.

The largest acquisition of private property for park use in Denver’s history, the 155-acre parcel of land formerly the Park Hill Golf Course will initially serve as a recreational open space while the city updates its infrastructure and makes renovations.

“This is a historic day,” said Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. “It is both a celebration of what is, and a call to action of what can be.”

While the park is currently made up of rolling grassland with a single paved walkway slicing through the middle, planners have ambitious goals for its future. A printed copy of the master plan displayed various amenities, including a dog park, playground, community garden, athletic fields, a miniature golf course, a picnic pavilion and an event lawn.

“It’s a blank slate, it’s an opportunity for them to hopefully do some pretty creative things out here, they have a lot of space to work with,” Logan said. “This will be a big improvement to the area.”

Hundreds of those affiliated with the project or interested in its promise gathered by the park’s entrance for Tuesday’s event. Many were bundled in puffed coats and knit hats to ward off the late-autumn chill.

The proposed features excited Kevin Logan, who lives in Cap Hill but regularly rides through the area on his bicycle.

The golf course closed in 2018 and remained dormant until the city finalized an agreement with its owner, Westside Investment Partners, earlier this month to transfer the land. Going back to Westside in the deal was a parcel of land near Denver International Airport.

While the city initially said that the amount of DIA’s land was 145 acres, a spokesperson for Johnston’s office confirmed Tuesday that it added another 20 acres of land for the developer after finding that the initial land was impacted by an immovable fiber line.

That addition, the spokesperson noted, did not change the deal as already agreed upon, and was conducted to maintain the value of the land involved in the transfer. City officials valued the Park Hill land at $12.7 million; the parcel going back to Westside needed to be valued the same.

“Because of the fiber optic duct corridors, an appraiser found that an additional 32 acres of industrial land (or equivalent value) would be needed to bring the total value of the land back up to $12.7 million,” the spokesperson said. “The City and County of Denver deals fairly and is transacting an additional 20 acres to Westside with compensation for the other 12 acres that we are not delivering.”

In sum, Denver will transfer $11.8 million as part of its end of the deal with the balance going to Westside to ensure the total value remains at $12.7 million, the spokesperson said, adding that that the transaction remains compliant with what City Council approved and there was “no need” to bring the revised agreement back for another vote.

For Johnston, the inaugural event was both a reflection on the city’s acquisition and an acknowledgement that the work on the park is just beginning.

“We know this is a little bit of a fixer upper right now in its current form,” Johnston said. “This is not exactly the format that we all dreamed it to be. What we start now is aiming to deliver on that possibility.

Denver Gazette reporter Deborah Grigsby contributed to this report.