Lansdowne residents can look forward to a new gym at the Joanne Road Park.
The gym was launched on Friday August 5, on the same day as another gym was opened at Woodbury Road Park in Kenwyn. Both parks are in Ward 60.
Each of the park upgrades had cost R100 000 and had come from this year’s ward allocation, said ward councillor Mark Kleinschmidt.
Black rubber mats were due to be installed under the equipment yesterday.
Mr Kleinschmidt said that the gym promoted a healthy lifestyle.
“There have been huge requests from residents for these gyms,” said Mr Kleinschmidt. “The gyms really make the parks look beautiful. The community will make much of it and hopefully be there to protect the park. They are are eyes.
“Gym membership is expensive, and now residents can enjoy this for free, and it is accessible to many. The neighbourhood is very excited about it and hopefully in time to come all 14 of the parks in ward 60 will receive this upgrade.”
Lansdowne resident and deputy chairman of the Yorkshire Neighbourhood Watch, Moosa Omar, said that he hoped the park would not be vandalised as others were. He said that the equipment needed to be secured with a fence.
“This was a really good idea. It will give the youth something else to do other than loiter around. The closest park gym was the one down the road from York Road Primary School so now residents will have a closer park gym to home. They do, however, need to install lighting otherwise people can only use it until about 6pm in winter because it gets dark early,” he said.
Ruwayda Ahmed, who lives and works in Lansdowne, said the youth would benefit from the park gyms as they often had nothing to do after school and gym membership was expensive.
“Now residents can just walk over to the park and not out of the area. It is also something that families can do together,” she said.