Walk into the building at 520 Ramblewood Drive this month and you're standing in what used to be the engine bay of Fire Station 2. The trucks are long gone. In their place: a wood-floor gym with pickleball lines taped down, a scoreboard, and pickup basketball most weekday afternoons. The building opened as Kiwanis Park Community Center on April 25, 2026, and it's the clearest example of something the city has been doing all year without saying it out loud: Coral Springs isn't finding new land to build on. It's rebuilding the parks and buildings it already owns, on a schedule that only makes sense once you see all four projects side by side.
That's the part worth understanding if you live here. Not any single ribbon-cutting, but the pattern connecting them.
A Fire Station Becomes a Gym
The community center at Kiwanis Park took more than six years to get from idea to opening day, and it wasn't a teardown. The city converted the 1977 fire station into a $3.4 million multi-generational space, keeping the building's bones and repurposing the old apparatus bays into an indoor recreation floor for pickleball and basketball. Outside, a new KOMPAN multi-use sports court, a patio, and a large meeting room round out the site. Roughly $1.13 million of the cost came from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, according to reporting on the opening, which explains part of the timeline: ARPA dollars came with spending deadlines that pushed projects like this one toward completion this year rather than next.
Fire Station 64 opened next door in 2023, which is what freed up the original 1977 building for this second act. At the ribbon-cutting, Commissioner Scott Brook put it plainly:
"This vision came directly from listening to residents."
That's not a small detail if you've filed a request or shown up to a commission meeting over the past few years. The city built exactly what the emails asked for: a teaching kitchen, a lounge, and a gym where the trucks used to park.
Same Contractor, Four Parks
Kiwanis is the story with a ribbon and a quote. The other three projects are quieter, and they share something the Kiwanis project doesn't: the same turf contractor.
North Community Park's four baseball fields, worn down from daily play and tournament use, were converted from grass and dirt to synthetic turf under a $1.4 million contract with AstroTurf Corporation, approved by the commission in October 2025 and completed in early 2026 ahead of spring leagues. That same company is now doing the same work at Mullins Park and Cypress Park, two of the city's most heavily used athletic sites. In February 2026, the commission considered nearly doubling that contract to $2.75 million and extending the agreement from May 2026 through May 2027, using cooperative pricing through Sourcewell to skip a second bidding process.
Here's what that means if you play in a rec league or coach a kids' team: the surface under your feet at Mullins or Cypress this season is being installed under the same vendor relationship that just finished North Community's fields. It's not four separate capital projects competing for budget. It's one ongoing turf program moving park to park, and if you liked what you saw at North Community, the same fix is scheduled to reach Cypress and Mullins on a rolling basis through next spring.
| Park | What Changed | Cost | Funding Source | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kiwanis Park | 1977 fire station converted to community center with gym, teaching kitchen, outdoor court | $3.4 million | ARPA funds ($1.13M) plus city budget | Open (April 25, 2026) |
| North Community Park | Four baseball fields converted from grass/dirt to AstroTurf | $1.4 million | City capital budget | Complete, early 2026 |
| Mullins Park & Cypress Park | Turf and track installation, contract renewal | Up to $2.75 million (contract cap) | City capital budget | Underway, contract runs May 2026 to May 2027 |
| Pride Promoters Park | First renovation since the 1990s: accessible playground, ADA basketball court, bronze sculpture | $345,000 | Mostly federal CDBG funds | Complete, early 2026 |
The Park That Got a Sculpture
Pride Promoters Park, near Riverside Drive and Wiles Road, hadn't been touched since it was built in the early 1990s. Its renovation cost $345,000, with $225,000 of that coming from federal Community Development Block Grant funds, and it added a modern, accessible playground and an ADA-compliant basketball court. The park also got public art: a bronze sculpture called "Wild Connections," by artists Gillie and Marc, showing five native Florida species, an eagle, panther, bobcat, turtle, and rabbit, seated together on a bench. The city paid $120,000 for it out of a separate Public Art Fund.
Like Kiwanis, this project ran past its original target. It was expected to wrap by February 2026 and, like the Ramblewood Drive building, slipped from that date before finishing. That's not a knock on the city. Renovating a 30-plus-year-old park or a half-century-old fire station involves more unknowns than pouring a new foundation on open land, and both projects show the same pattern: renovation work in a built-out city takes longer than the first press release promises, but it does land.
What This Looks Like on a Saturday
If you haven't been to any of these sites since the work wrapped, here's what's actually usable right now:
- Kiwanis Park Community Center (520 Ramblewood Drive): open to the public, with an indoor gym for pickleball and basketball, a teaching kitchen for cooking classes, and a front desk to ask about the current class schedule.
- North Community Park: fall and winter league play is already running on the new turf infields, a change from grass fields that used to go unplayable after heavy rain.
- Pride Promoters Park: the new accessible playground and basketball court are open, and the bronze sculpture is installed for anyone walking or biking through.
- Mullins Park and Cypress Park: turf and track work is active under the extended contract, so expect some fields in rotation through spring 2027 as the project moves between sites.
None of this required the city to acquire new land, which matters in a place where there isn't much open land left to acquire. It's the same 49 parks the department has managed for years, just with old infrastructure finally catching up to how much use it gets.
Why This Matters Beyond the Ribbon-Cuttings
A fire station becoming a community gym, four ballfields getting the same turf treatment as the park down the road, a 30-year-old playground finally getting rebuilt: none of these are flashy on their own. Together, they say something about how a city with fixed boundaries keeps improving without sprawling outward. Coral Springs isn't running out of parks. It's running out of untouched parks, and this year it started working through the list.
If you're weighing whether a neighborhood still has room to grow into itself, this is the kind of detail that doesn't show up in a listing description. It shows up in what your tax dollars actually built this year, and whether the city keeps showing up with contractors and completion dates instead of just plans.
Curious what any of this means for your own street, your school zone, or your home's place in a changing neighborhood? The Steven Kaminer team has been watching Coral Springs and Parkland long enough to know which improvements move the needle and which are just paint. Request a complimentary home valuation or speak with our team today.
