The 8,000 square-foot lot at 3rd and L streets NE was very nearly home to yet another gleaming new condo building in NoMa. Instead it will be the neighborhood’s first public park when it opens on Saturday.

Swampoodle Park will feature the neighborhood’s first official dog park, benches, and a Wallholla—a vertical children’s playground. Local leaders will celebrate the grand opening on Saturday with an inaugural climb on the structure, followed by a dog procession.

The opening is part of a flurry of new public parks and spaces in NoMa, long in the making, that have been shepherded by the non-profit NoMa Parks Foundation. The group recently inaugurated “Rain,” a dramatic art installation illuminating the M Street NE underpass with thousands of pulsating lights. Three more “underpass art parks” are also in the works, along with a 2.5-acre park adjacent to the Metropolitan Branch Trail.

Alethia Tanner Park, named for a formerly enslaved woman who helped open D.C.’s first school for African American children, will include a huge lawn, playground, boardwalks and another dog park. Construction has not yet begun, but officials are hoping to open in late 2019 or early 2020.

Plans for parks were non-existent in the original plans for the neighborhood. So in 2012, the NoMa BID created the NoMa Parks Foundation with the aim of developing a series of public spaces for the growing neighborhood. In 2013, the D.C. Council committed $50 million as a public-private partnership to help bring them to fruition.

The lot at 3rd and L that has now become Swampoodle Park was originally going to be a condo building called The Dana. When the investment company put the lot up for sale, the foundation swooped in and bought the parcel of land for $3.2 million (the city owns the land). Then the foundation worked for years with residents to learn what they wanted in a public park.

The name, which was chosen through a public vote, hearkens back to a time when Tiber Creek regularly flooded the neighborhood. Irish immigrants dubbed the area “Swampoodle,” a portmanteau of “swamp” and “puddle.”

The park’s most dramatic amenity is a caged, vertical structure with green accents that stretches up three levels—a kids playground in the sky called a Walholla. The Dutch company Carve pioneered the playground, which is engineered to maximize space in urban areas. There are just six others in the United States, including one in Clarksburg, Maryland.

Much of the rest of the park is devoted to the city’s 13th (official) dog park.

The NoMa Parks Foundation “built us a beautiful space that will be enjoyed and cherished for years to come,” said Friends of NoMa Dogs, which will maintain that area of the park, in a statement. “We’re excited this day is finally here. No doubt, our dogs will be thrilled too.”

Swampoodle Park is located at the corner of 3rd and L streets in Northeast. The grand opening will take place on Saturday, November 17 at 11 a.m. The inaugural kid climb and a puppy parade will take place at 11:30 a.m.