Auburn church breaks ground on park for community

The permits have been finalized, some 20 to 25 total, and a construction team is ready to go. Now it's "crunch time" for Auburn Grace Community Church, time to raise the remaining funds needed to build Grace Park, its dream multiple-activities gathering place for the community across from the church on six acres between Bell Road, Olympic Way and Deseret Drive. Phil Sparling, a lead pastor at Auburn Grace for 32 years and a project board member who led the effort to generate the first $1 million of a targeted $6 million cost to build the park, said he feels "a mixture of excitement and a little bit of anxiousness." "We really want this to be a community project. We put a fundraising team together to go out to the community and we've been getting a lot of favorable responses, but now is crunch time where we need to raise the money." A ground-breaking ceremony before the actual September ground breaking was held Friday morning on park property. Auburn Grace welcomed various guests to the ceremony – from Auburn Chamber of Commerce and church members to Placer County Sheriff's officers. Sparling spoke to the crowd, and newer team member John MacGregor gave a short presentation to describe Grace Park's layout, which includes a meditation area, covered bocce courts and two pickleball courts. Sparling noted during his introductory speech a senior development with 858 units is starting nearby "so we really have this park in mind not only for sports and a playground but also a walking path and bocce for our closest neighbors." The park includes lots of trees and vegetation, an area for food trucks, founder and donor walls, a multipurpose sports field for soccer, baseball and flag football, a walking trail (three laps equals a mile), a reflection garden, picnic tables and an amphitheatre for concerts, and what MacGregor described as "an amazing playground, called Pikes Playground." Dogs are welcome at the dawn-to-dusk park. "I call this the Disneyland of parks, except for a roller coaster. I think that's in Phase 2, though," MacGregor quipped as he pointed out the park's many features on a large rendering. "In a very short period of time, it's going to look like this – absolutely incredible. It's unlike any other park I've ever seen. So many parks are singularly focused. This has everything." MacGregor heads the Founder's Circle, for donations "north of $100,000," he said. "This is a fixture of the park where someone or an entity can leave a legacy for multi generations to come." The church repurchased the property in 2008 and announced its vision for Grace Park in a story in the Auburn Journal in March. Grace Park is its own entity as a 501c3, Sparling said. Construction is scheduled to start in September and go until winter sets in, to pick up again next spring.