Brooklyn Park Officially Opens New Teen Center at Zanewood Rec Center

The bleachers were mostly full Thursday night inside The Wood, the new teen center that is now a part of Zanewood Recreation Center in Brooklyn Park. They were there to watch the annual Cops and Teens Basketball tournament. From now on, it can be played in the city’s first wholly-owned basketball gym.

Brooklyn Park’s new The Wood teen center includes the Best Buy Teen Tech Center for young people to try their hand at video gaming, podcasting, and recording music.

“We’re really excited to have youth come in for the first time and really check out the building,” said City of Brooklyn Park Parks and Facilities Manager Marcus Hill. “It’s been really great, working with youth services division on creating this extraordinary building. It’s just been really great feedback from city staff and folks that have been able to walk through, but the real test is having our community walk through for the first time and seeing kids come here that have never been here and having new registered participants has been really, really great.”

Hundreds of people milled about and checked out the new facility, which includes a Best Buy Teen Tech Center–complete with video gaming computers, podcast studio, music recording studio, and a photo/video studio–along with art and game spaces next to intervention and counseling spaces.

“We really intentionally designed this building to kind of choose your own adventure,” said Hill. “We didn’t really want staff to have to just program each individual space.”

The existing space inside Zanewood was also remodeled to provide more dedicated space to the Fusion, or grade school-aged, programming.

The Wood was funded in part by the Thielen Foundation, operated by Minnesota Vikings All-Pro Wide Receiver Adam Thielen and his wife.

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