A community’s parks are sometimes compared to a person’s lungs. Lungs take up a lot of space, because they need room to perform their dynamic function – breathe in, breathe out – and people with compromised lungs often feel as if they are suffocating.

Drive through the core of Coeur d’Alene, and you’ll see construction cranes everywhere. Buildings are on the rise in Boom Town, USA. The building boom could feel suffocating were it not for the city’s 21 parks. Last week, Coeur d’Alene added a new one. It’s called Riverstone Park, because it’s part of Riverstone, a housing and retail development just off Northwest Boulevard. The 11-acre park features a man-made lake, an amphitheater, walking trail, playground, 600 shrubs and 1,000 aquatic plants.

Developer John Stone described what the area looked like before the park plan came to be. “There was a mined-out gravel pit and a couple of dead horses. We had some major reclamation to do.”

Riverstone Park is a public-private collaboration. It cost SRM Development $3.2 million to build. The development company will eventually be reimbursed $2.8 million of that in property taxes generated by the homes and businesses that make up Riverstone. But the park belongs to all citizens. It is under Coeur d’Alene’s Parks Department, though SRM will pay for the park’s maintenance for the next three years.

Of the unique park plan, Coeur d’Alene Parks Director Doug Eastwood said, “John threw it out there and we caught it.”

Parks have never come cheap, even when land was plentiful and relatively inexpensive. A century ago in Spokane, civic leaders and the renowned Olmsted Brothers firm envisioned an elaborate park system for Spokane. The goal: Every family in Spokane would be just a 10-minute walk from a park or playground.

Generous donors stepped forward to fund the bold vision, but the city was still $1 million short. Voters narrowly agreed to come up with that $1 million in a 1910 bond vote. And with that vote, Spokane’s legacy park system was born.

A century ago, people from the East and Midwest – and immigrants from faraway lands – were discovering the beauty and openness of Eastern Washington and North Idaho. In 2007, Spokane and North Idaho is being discovered again.

The ongoing challenge will be to preserve – and pay for – green spaces so that a century from now the Inland Northwest will still be known for its quality of life.

Riverstone Park is the latest example of a collaborative and innovative way to do community green spaces. May there be many more. With every park added to the region, we can all breathe a little bit easier.