Activate Allen County, Cenovus team up for community health

LIMA — A new partnership announced Friday hopes to bring greater opportunities to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles in the Lima community.

Activate Allen County leadership announced Friday that the organization is partnering with Cenovus Energy to help promote healthy living, with Cenovus committing $250,000 over the next three years to this endeavor, focusing on enhancing pocket parks and green spaces and organizing public safety initiatives and health symposiums.

“One of our key values for the refinery is ‘make it better and do it together,’” Cenovus Energy Lima Refinery General Manager Dean Hempfling said. “This partnership with Activate Allen County really plays into this. It’s important to us that we can have a green space in the community for the community that we operate in, and that’s why we chose this partnership.”

The green space, in this case, is the Central Lima Neighborhood Association Reading Park on West North Street. Friday’s announced investment will fund the creation of an outdoor exercise area at the park, providing easier access to outdoor fitness for residents in that neighborhood.

“We’re going to install an outdoor fitness circuit, so it’s going to be a one-stop shop for folks who come down to the Central Lima Neighborhood Association Reading Park to feed your mind and feed your body,” Activate Allen County Co-Director Josh Unterbrink said. “This is going to add another opportunity for folks to come down to this green space to be outside and nourish your body with an exercise circuit that allows you to do a full-body physical fitness strength exercise program right here close to Mercy Health-St. Rita’s.”

Unterbrink hopes to create two additional pocket park spaces like this in other parts of the city that currently lack close access to green space.

“We want to make sure that people have some green space access available to them about 15 minutes or less from where they live, and so we’re looking at strategic areas throughout our community for where our next two spaces will go,” he said.

Unterbrink anticipates that the equipment will be in place in the park by the end of this year.