The new park at Green Bay's rapidly developing Titletown District officially opened over the weekend, the Packers announced, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a public event that introduced community members and visitors to the variety of daily activities available at Titletown.
The multi-acre park features a plaza, activity area, playground and sports field, with year-round, diverse programming, which includes fitness-related activities, cultural opportunities, fun gameday action and versatile space for many different uses.
"We’re excited to open the park today and see the project get to this point after years of working and envisioning it," Packers President/CEO Mark Murphy said in a statement. "We’re looking forward to this area becoming an excellent asset for the community."
A full list of upcoming fitness classes and activities that will be offered can be found here, and everything is free and open to the public unless otherwise noted, according to the Packers.
The park will also include a winter tubing hill and skating rink and trail, which are to open later this year in conjunction with colder weather and the start of snow tubing and ice skating. Below the tubing hill, a bistro and event space will open later this fall when construction is complete.
The bistro, which will accommodate 80 guests, is named 46 Below, an homage to the Ice Bowl, the legendary 1967 NFL Championship game at Lambeau Field when the wind chill temperature famously plummeted to 46 degrees below zero. The name also describes the space, which is on the ground floor, 46 feet below the top of the tubing hill.
The event space on the second level, which can accommodate 200 guests, will be called Rockwood Terrace, in honor of the Packers’ former practice facility, Rockwood Lodge, that's located 18 miles northeast of Green Bay and was used for training camps from 1946 to '49.
The plaza, adjacent to Ridge Road, features landscaping as well as hardscape and will be programmed in multiple ways, including festivals and holiday fairs or simply as a relaxation space. The activity area features games like horseshoes, shuffleboard, bocce, ping pong and bean bag toss, as well as other activities, such as a reading rack, art cart and a variety of board games.
The playground features dynamic equipment with a Play 60 theme in a setting and configuration unique to the community. The 36,000-square foot area also has football-specific equipment and a 40-yard dash element. The sports field, sized as a regulation football field, utilizes an artificial surface that maximizes its use in a variety of ways much of the year and features infill from Nike Grind, which is created from recycled Nike shoes.
To create the new park, Titletown worked with Sterling Project Development (project manager), Rossetti (architect), Biederman Redevelopment Ventures (park development), and Miron Construction (general contractor).
Just west of iconic Lambeau Field, Titletown's location is expected to draw additional visitors to the area, spur further regional economic growth, offer new amenities to residents and complement greater Green Bay's attraction as a place to live, work and recreate.
Phase one of Titletown includes the four-diamond hotel Lodge Kohler, Hinterland Restaurant and a Bellin Health Titletown Sports Medicine or Orthopedics. Details about the second phase of the development will be announced in the coming months, the team said.
Here are eight photos of the new Titletown park, from its recent opening:
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
