Sugar Beet Park

The City of Fort Collins collaborated with Hall Irwin to bring this new, 5.3-acre neighborhood park to life on the site of the former Great Western Sugar Factory, which inspired both the naming and design of the park.

The park features a multi-use turf field, restrooms with a heated maintenance shed, pollinator gardens, basketball court, pavilion with reclaimed beetle kill T&G ceiling, trails, parking, and custom play structures including a zip line, repurposed railcar benches, and a 12-foot tall wooden beet play structure.

The sliding rail benches were repurposed from the obsolete City Park mini-train line as an homage to the old train cars that once transported sugar beets across the factory grounds. The wooden beet structure with accent pieces was fabricated with sustainably sourced wood in Canada, then transported to the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery before permanent relocation to the park after the park's civil infrastructure was complete. This park playfully takes on the history of the site and what the sugar beet industry once meant for the surrounding neighborhoods, and is now a well-known recreational feature of the City of Fort Collins.