Philadelphia has some of the best city parks you’ll find anywhere… and here’s some good news about two of them.

The newly transformed Dilworth Park is set to open at City Hall this week as a modern, welcoming, multifaceted outdoor space. The park will include an enormous Great Lawn, four tree groves, an outdoor café, a computer-programmable fountain, a performance space, activity areas for outdoor markets and an ice-skating rink in season. Additionally, SEPTA transit lines will now be far more accessible with new elevators and new stairs, sheltered by clear-glass headhouses, to connect the surface streets with new entrances to the Market and Broad Street Lines and transit hub below.

This Thursday, September 4th, there will be a ribbon-cutting and opening ceremony led by Mayor Michael Nutter at 11:00 a.m., followed by a full weekend of celebrations to christen the new park. Thursday will feature an all-day community arts and culture festival featuring performances and talent from neighborhoods across the city. On Friday, September 5th, from noon to 7 p.m., there will be a Picnic in the Park, providing an introduction for Center City’s office workers including picnic-style lunches for sale and live music in the park. Sips in the Park will begin at 5 p.m. and continue until 7 p.m., with more live music and happy-hour drink specials. Then on Saturday, September 6th, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., it’s Playtime in the Park with family-friendly activities including music, storytelling, games, and more.

On opening day, the park will be almost complete, but a few sections — including the lawn and walkways to South Penn Square — are scheduled to be finished between mid- and late October. For more information on this exciting new park, visit www.ccdparks.org.

The other good city park news is about the new Spruce Street Harbor Park at Penn’s Landing Marina, which opened this summer for the first time, to great fanfare. This great new park includes a boardwalk, an urban beach, fountains, and misting areas right on the Delaware River waterfront, only steps away from Dockside. The centerpiece of the park is a series of floating barges complete with lily pad water gardens, a pop-up restaurant and bar, and nets that will suspend visitors over the water.

Now, by popular demand, Spruce Street Park will stay open through Sunday, September 28th, instead of its original end-of-August closing date. It’s estimated that an average of 35,000 people per week visited the park this summer, with almost double those numbers during the July 4th holiday week. The park has received many accolades which include being named one of the world’s best urban beaches by the Huffington Post, being included on a list of the world’s coolest floating restaurants by Travel and Leisure, and a “Best of Philly” award from Philadelphia Magazine. To learn more about Spruce Street Park, click here.

Why not check out these two great Philadelphia parks this week and see what all the buzz is about? Access to some of the best city parks in the country? Just one more reason to love living at Dockside.