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NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans City Park and Friends of City Park have announced the development of its first community engagement digital mobile application to help facilitate safe outdoor recreation made possible by a $15,000 grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation. City Park is excited to begin development of this new project giving the Park an opportunity to engage more with those who are focused on health and wellness through Park recreation.

The Park will partner with Outerspacial, a platform developed to gather data and funnel it into the hands of Park users, to develop the mobile app that will provide maps of Park trails and routes and to post information relevant to visitor needs. Trails will be created for all fitness levels. Routes will be sorted by distance and duration set for walking and running. The Park will also partner with Youth Run NOLA for the project development.

In the future, Park visitors will be able to use the mobile app to check-in, report issues, create fitness challenges, rate trails, and share real-time details with their friends while out on the trail. We hope to partner with other local community groups and individuals who run, walk, plog, or exercise in City Park to add their routes and/or healthy routines to the application for other users to then have the opportunity to view. If an organization or program is interested in being a partner to share information, they should contact Liz Lowe, GIS Specialist, at llowe@nocp.org. The application will be available for guests within six months.

“With the help of this grant, City Park can allocate resources toward recreation as we adjust to a new normal of Covid-19 life. The Park’s short-term goal is to open the line of communication between City Park and the community strictly about recreation through the app. The Park’s long-term goal is to use the information gathered to organize a scalable wellness program in the future and improve our trial systems throughout the Park,” says Liz Lowe, GIS Specialist for New Orleans City Park.