Rabie Street park gets a facelift

FONTAINEBLEAU – Fences built for the community to make park safer.

February 8, 2017

Ashtyn Mackenzie 1 minute read

The fence that was built allowing for a secure parking area for residents and overflow CityROCK customers.

FONTAINEBLEAU – CityROCK Johannesburg partnered with the Johannesburg City Parks & Zoo to help create a safer environment, not only for park users but for visitors to CityROCK.

CityROCK is an indoor gym that boasts some of the highest rock-climbing walls in the country, including yoga facilities and other great outdoor activities. The first phase of the project was to clean up the Rabie Street Park in Fontainebleau. The park has, for many years, had a bad reputation with many attempts to keep displaced people from damaging the park and to keep litter away.

In December about, 15 CityROCK volunteers took on the huge task of ensuring the park was free from rubbish.

“We walked the whole park up to Rabie Street and picked up as much litter and rubbish as we could. The section by the substation was particularly bad,” said the gym manager, Cally Bishop.

The second phase of the upliftment journey came in January when a fence was built, allowing for a secure parking area for residents and overflow CityROCK customers. “We have filled the parking lot up many times since its completion; we are just looking at installing solar-powered lights to make the parking even more secure,” said Bishop.

Ward 104 councillor Mike Wood said, “We, as council officials, are indeed very blessed to have an organisation like CityROCK as our partners going forward. I was at the cleanup and was struck by the enthusiasm of the young people.”

General manager new business development for Johannesburg City Parks & Zoo, Louise Gordon, explained how it is indeed a great partnership and the progress made so far has had a big impact on the park.

The next part of the journey, Bishop explained, is to install a nine-hole Frisbee golf course inside the park. The holes will be concreted in different parts of the park and users are welcome to rent the equipment from CityROCK and play for free. They will also be installing about five large dustbins to help keep the park clean.