Introducing the Downtown Pocket Park

This park will provide an outdoor venue for downtown residents and visitors to sit, enjoy Cheyenne’s sun and beautiful weather, and partake in food from the surrounding restaurants.

A pocket park is a concept that has been around since at least the 1960s, utilizing small urban spaces for community good and well-being. They are hyper-local, focused on the immediate needs of the surrounding community. This park will provide an outdoor venue for downtown residents and visitors to sit, enjoy Cheyenne’s sun and beautiful weather, and partake in food from the surrounding restaurants. 

Ideally located by many of the DDA’s restaurants, this new pocket park addresses an acute need during COVID-19: socially distant dining, outdoors, for people right in the downtown corridor. Curbside and takeout are important services our restaurants currently offer to help keep patrons safe, and the DDA is happy to support this goal by increasing outdoor seating. 

“The pocket park is a wonderful addition to our downtown and provides a community space that complies with social distancing guidelines,” said DDA Executive Director, Amber Ash. “It is centrally located and offers additional outdoor seating for customers to utilize when ordering takeout from our downtown restaurants that might not have access to outdoor seating. The pocket park will also have access to a sanitizing cart with cleaners and paper towels for constituents to sanitize the space as they wish in order to feel safe.”

Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr hopes the new pocket park is a valuable addition to the downtown, “We are proud to support our small business and hope that the addition of this pocket park encourages the public to enjoy our downtown and everything it has to offer while being able to follow the social distancing guidelines.” 

The DDA was pleased to work with downtown business owners Jon and Renee Jelinek to create the ideal space for the pocket park. “We had the idea to use our parking lot for something more than just parking because it’s such a beautiful space with the vibrant murals. This seemed like the perfect time to make it happen, and thanks to the DDA, it has,” explained Paramount Café owner Renee Jelinek.

We are incredibly grateful for this opportunity to provide a valuable service to our downtown community. We would like to thank the downtown business owners who have allowed us to place signs on their property, to downtown business owners Jon and Renee Jelinek who have worked with us on this process, and to Lowe’s Home Improvement in Cheyenne who donated the tables, the flowers, the flower pots, and the potting soil. We would also like to thank the office of Mayor Marian Orr and the City of Cheyenne Parking Division for helping make this space possible. Thank you to all of the people in our community who have come together to work on this project.

This park is a community effort, in the heart of the community, to serve the community. Please consider coming downtown, grabbing some takeout from a downtown restaurant, and enjoying this new urban green space. It feels fitting that this new community space opens on July 10th, the 130th anniversary of Wyoming’s statehood. 

Also keep a close watch on the space for additional beautification in this park. We are thrilled to share that the Paint Slingers will be painting the tables as part of their Street Art Festival they will be holding on July 19th and 18th. 

We look forward to finding additional opportunities to serve downtown and the people who live, work, and visit here. Downtown Cheyenne is an amazing place and has fantastic things to come.