Ongoing work is being done by the city and a north central Calgary community to preserve a historic treasure and to transform a local park into a destination.

Restoration work is ongoing on one of the nearly-110-year-old Centre Street lions that resides in Crescent Height’s Rotary Park, while the area residents are driving ahead with a plan to build a water feature for the community.

The City of Calgary is also in the process of planting more native grasses and flowers in the park to make it a haven for birds and bees and the like.

Since 2017, however, when one of the Centre Street lions found a home in Rotary Park, the City has been dealing with an ongoing challenge to protect and preserve it from graffiti incidents.  

Sophia Zweifel, acting public art lead and public art conservator, told LWC that the careful effort to protect the lion from both the elements and the public is a slow and challenging one.

Since 2020, when the City of Calgary first started recording graffiti incidents at the site, they’ve had 15 instances of ‘severe’ graffiti on the lion’s outer surface.

“It’s a 100-plus-year-old lion, 100-plus-year-old concrete, a pretty sensitive surface,” she said.

“So, removing graffiti from it can be really challenging.”

The City of Calgary has improved lighting and installed a security camera around the concrete cat to dissuade vandals. That project cost $54,863.

When they do get a graffiti incident, they can’t hire your typical graffiti abatement contractors. Zweifel said pressure washing, sand blasting, or strong acids will degrade the century-old concrete and cause serious damage.

Not only does it damage the outside, but it forces water deep into the sculpture, degrading the internal structure and exacerbating the freeze-thaw cycle, which produces cracks.

The City of Calgary’s public art team does use solvents, but in a gentle way that solubilizes the graffiti. They do it using poultices.

“A poultice is like a clay mask on your face, like a porous matrix but you can deliver something in that will, it’s through capillary action, so it’ll actually draw out what you’re trying to solubilize,” Zweifel said.

Zweifel also said that there’s an annual specialized, breathable application for the lion that protects it from both graffiti and the elements.

“It’s a really important piece of Calgary heritage, and because it does get hit so frequently, we make sure that that coating is always really current and fresh,” Zweifel said.

Fountain for the community

Humaira Palibroda, parks director for the Crescent Heights Community Association has been on her own mission to bring a public water fountain to Rotary Park. It’s something she said community members have been asking for now for more than a decade but had no success in moving forward.  

Essentially, Palibroda said they want to deliver a hydration hub in the off-leash area of Rotary Park, in the southwest corner next to the Mount Pleasant Tennis Club.

“There’s no potable water there for animals and humans that come there,” she told LWC.

The process to drive it ahead hasn’t been easy, Palibroda said. They’d initially raised $14,000 for the project but then were told they needed a concrete path that could withstand a certain pressure. Then, it needed an approved development permit, and then a set of engineered drawings (which were eventually generously done by Embe Consulting, Palibroda said).

Fundraising has since bumped up to $24,000, and they’re looking for more help to bring the project over the finish line. There’s a sign with a QR code erected at the location where the future fountain will quench the public’s thirst.

“I realized why now (previous resident attempts) got nowhere because, oh, my God, Darren, it is so difficult,” Palibroda said.

The addition of the new fountain, which they hope to have built this construction season, and the added natural plants and flowers, plus the lighting and security camera upgrades will have a positive effect, Palibroda said.

“Any kind of park infrastructure, whether it’s garbage cans, lighting, it actually expands the user base,” she said.

“It does really elevate the user experience, because … it’s used as a cut-through park for commuters who walk to and from work, to downtown.”

Palibroda said all of these efforts could turn Rotary Park into a destination for Calgary residents.

“We’re not a destination park, like Riley Park, but it could even develop into that because of the accessibility of it,” she said.

More information on the Rotary Park drinking fountain can be found here. All donations are eligible for a tax receipt from Parks Foundation Calgary.

To find out more about the City of Calgary’s restoration efforts on the Rotary Park Centre Street lion, visit their website.