After more than five years of planning and debate and nearly $20 million in swiftly executed upgrades, Salt Lake City on Friday threw open a refreshed version of Pioneer Park.

City and parks officials now hope residents of all stripes will throw their arms around the newly improved downtown open space.

“Embrace this place. It is your place,” City Council member Jennifer Napier-Pearce said at a grand reopening ceremony as she praised the park’s “glow up” in front of about 200 people gathered beneath a new pavilion.

“Bring the dog. Bring the kids. Soak up some sun. Touch the grass,” the downtown-centered District 4 council member said. “This is a safe and welcoming place for everyone in our community.”

In a whirlwind, eight-month transformation, city-hired crews from Big-D Construction have given the 10-acre urban park at 300 South and 300 West a host of improvements and landscaping concentrated at the park’s north end.

Venture over and you will find a new all-abilities playground, added pathways, pickleball and basketball courts, several areas for dogs and a mist-fountain plaza, along with fresh landscaping and more than 120 newly planted trees, interspersed with many of the park’s existing mature ones.

Pioneer Park also now has its first ever art installation, a vibrantly colorful display called Common Roots, which serves as its northeast gateway.

Artists James Shen and Jennifer Tran said the archway is meant to celebrate language, nature and the diverse communities and immigrant experiences that have shaped Utah’s capital.

That’s also in keeping with Pioneer Park’s sometime moniker as the Plymouth Rock of Utah — for all the ways it has served as a landing point through the years.

And after a checkered history of sometimes being a magnet for vagrancy and criminal activity, Pioneer Park now has a ranger station with public restrooms, which, along with all the other amenities, are expected to bring out more neighbors and bolster public safety.

Friday’s unveiling comes as the city’s downtown population continues to mushroom.

The long-awaited improvements have been paid for through a combination of impact fees charged to developers and bond investments cleared by the City Council.

Not bad for a park space that is more than 175 years old and has seen virtually every land use you can imagine — from a longtime Native American gathering spot to being dubbed “Old Fort” by early Latter-day Saint pioneers to a site for public swimming pools, circuses, locomotive displays, soccer fields, concerts and seasonal home of the Downtown Farmers Market.

Mayor Erin Mendenhall, who with a crowd of city officials snipped a ribbon with large scissors to declare the space reopened, said the park’s real opening started when residents actually started using it.

“It happened when I pulled up and saw kids playing on the playground,” the mayor said. “It happened when people showed up with their dogs and had a dog park to play in, or when you get your food across the street at Carlucci’s or Tony Caputo’s [Market and Deli] or someplace else and you bring it over here and decide to meet up with your friends. Or when you play a game of pickup basketball after work.”

The mayor and others praised contractor Big-D Construction, whose corporate offices abut the park, for transforming it on a tight timeline since February. That quick action followed more than five years of the city’s extensive planning and refining of visions for what the city’s oldest open space might become, including an in-depth cultural report on its history.

Nancy Monteith, senior landscape architect with the city’s Department of Public Lands and a key driver of the Pioneer Park improvements over two decades, noted that new housing has sprung up in recent years all around the area.

Downtown, meanwhile, has the smallest spans of green space per resident anywhere citywide, Monteith noted.

“This green oasis in the heart of the city,” she told Friday’s crowd, “is more important than ever.”