‘A gift from one generation to the next’: New Barrio Nopal park opens in Tucson’s south side

Tucson, Arizona – Zaira Gastelum stood in the shade as she watched her little girl, Laly, run through the brand new splash pad in her pink tutu bathing suit. Laly held a butterfly water feature and ran in circles, spraying nearby kids, her two long braids tied at the end in pink bows whipping in the wind as she spun. 

Gastelum and four-year-old Laly walked to the new Barrio Nopal Neighborhood Park Saturday morning for its grand opening, where community and neighborhood leaders shared how the park south of Valencia Road between Sixth Avenue and Nogales Highway in Tucson’s south side came to be. Hundreds of families attended, eager to use the park for the first time.

The neighborhood park has been more than two decades in the making. When Tucson Mayor Regina Romero was a program coordinator with the county neighborhood reinvestment program about 25 years ago, she looked into whether the land along Elvira Road east of Sixth Avenue had any environmental damage. At the time, the late congressman Raúl Grijalva, then-Pima County supervisor, and then-Pima County Supervisor Dan Eckstrom, wanted to invest in parks and affordable housing in neighborhoods, including what is now the Barrio Nopal neighborhood, Romero said.

“To the young families that are part of this community, to the children that are finally receiving the investment of a neighborhood park, muchísimas gracias,” Romero said. “Thank you for your diligence, thank you for your belief and your incredible patience. Know that you have a mayor that cares about this community, about the South Side and bringing equity and investment into each and every family in the city of Tucson, no matter your zip code.”

The more than $1.6 million park was funded by the 2018 Proposition 407 Parks and Connections Bond — a $225 million bond package to improve city parks and amenities between 2020 and 2028 — and with federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. 

City leaders approved the park master plan in October 2022 and began construction in May 2024. While the park is officially open, only the first phase of its design has been completed, which included the splash pad, the shaded playground, bathrooms, walking paths and ramadas. Once complete, the park will also have basketball courts, a dog park and paved, well-lit walking paths.

Lane Santa Cruz, Tucson’s vice-mayor and Ward 1 council member, representing the Barrio Nopal neighborhood, grew up on Tucson’s south side and spent time with friends in the Elvira neighborhood, she recalled. 

“This park is a gift from one generation to the next,” Santa Cruz said. “From neighbors who fought for their kids to those kids who became parents and grandparents and now to new families who will enjoy this space for years to come.”

A place for a strong sense of community

As soon as the speeches were over, children, many of them in swimsuits, and their parents crowded around the entrance to the splash pad. After a loud cheer from the crowd, the iron fence gate was opened and the children ran inside. A few minutes later, water started bubbling up and pouring out of the colorful accessories. 

Gastelum smiled as she watched her four-year-old play with other children and enjoy the splash pad. She said it’s important to have a neighborhood park where kids can play, be active and be away from electronics for a while. It’s also a great place to get to know neighbors, she said. 

“I know that we're gonna be spending here every day for the rest of the summer, probably,” she said. “I'm already planning to see if I can get one of the ramadas for her birthday.” 

Nate Martin and one of his daughters rode their bike to their new neighborhood park on Saturday, where they met up with his wife and his other daughter. As he watched his little girl go down the slide and climb around with friends in the playground, Martin said he hopes the next phase of the park will have an undesignated space, like a field, where kids can play soccer or run around. 

Martin has lived in the area for about 10 years and volunteers with youth groups of children between 12 and 15 years old, he said. Even before becoming a father, he wanted a neighborhood park so the kids in the youth groups could have somewhere to play and hang out, Martin said.  

The park will help neighbors build connections and trust, which will lead to a stronger sense of community, he said. 

“I think spaces like this, even though they seem really innocent, they're a way for us to build solidarity as a community, as a neighborhood,” Martin said. “For us to just see each other, see, like, I live the same experience that you do.”

When he had kids, he worried about how they would stay active and develop healthy bodies and minds, he said. The park is a place where kids don’t feel pressured to play outside or exercise, Martin said. 

“I think that the intersection of that joyfulness and just playing with each other, with exercise, is just a huge part of helping them build that active lifestyle,” he said. 

A worthwhile, decades-long wait

As city workers took down canopies and loaded them back into trucks, Margie Mortimer walked around the park, leaning into her quad cane to help her move around.

It was almost noon, the DJ was gone and the sound of neighbors talking and children laughing and screaming in the distance replaced the music. The two food trucks that had been parked out front — one selling ice cream, snow cones and aguas frescas; the other, the famous El Guero Canelo, selling bacon-wrapped Sonoran hot dogs — were about ready to leave the park. 

In 2015, Mortimer went to a parks and recreation master plan meeting to request that a park be built in her neighborhood. She was glad to have a seat at the table, as Tucson Parks and Recreation officials listened to her as she explained the needs of the Elvira Neighborhood community. 

“We didn't want our children to play in the streets,” Mortimer said from the podium at the beginning of the Saturday ceremony. “It's unsafe for them.”

“This is the nana in me, okay?” Mortimer said toward the end of her speech, reminding her neighbors to take care of their park, keep it clean and report any crimes they see. 

Mortimer has owned a home in the Elvira Neighborhood, which is adjacent to and used to include Barrio Nopal, since 1979. She raised two of her children in Tucson, where they attended Sunnyside schools, including the middle school across the street from the park. Now, she’s a grandmother and great-grandmother and looks forward to bringing the kids to the park when they visit her, she said. 

“We needed a park for these kids,” she said. “Not just kids, everybody, to get out of our houses and go out and enjoy the day.” 

As the crowd dwindled, and she watched the last few families in the splash pad, she said she felt grateful and blessed to see the park finally open. 

“It’s one of those things you don’t think is going to happen,” she said. “But as long as you’re persevering and you have the tenacity, it’ll happen.”

Stephanie Casanova is an independent journalist from Tucson, Arizona, covering community stories for 10 years. She is passionate about narrative, in-depth storytelling that is inclusive and reflects the diversity of the communities she covers. She recently covered the criminal justice beat at Signal Cleveland, where she shed light on injustices and inequities in the criminal legal system and centered the experiences of justice-involved individuals, both victims and people who go through the system and their impacted loved ones.