Houston, we have a restoration.

If you have ever walked along the Humber River Trail in Etobicoke, you might have encountered a spaceship-like structure that's seen better days.

For people like Stephanie Mah, who lives near the Oculus Pavilion and is helping with its future restoration, "it's not something you see every day now and it tells a story about its time and about a culture where nothing was too humble to be designed with imagination and scale."

The Oculus, designed by architect Alan Crossley and built near the beginning of the Space Age in 1959, is now covered in graffiti and has deteriorated, according to Mah, vice president of the Architecture Conservancy of Ontario, Toronto branch.

But now, a national charity called Park People is putting up funds to restore the pavilion — a project Mah will be co-leading.

During her appearance Wednesday on CBC Here and Now, Mah said she hopes the "neglected" building will host "community events that make it a really welcoming and inviting space," and that the restoration will be "respectful" of its heritage.

'It’s this fantastical space-age structure ... designed by architect Alan Crossley as a shelter and comfort station," according to Stephanie Mah of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario. (Architectural Conservancy of Ontario)

The first step in the project is to clean the space, with future plans to add lights, public art and seating to encourage people to spend time at the pavilion again.

Park People, which helps communities restore and utilize parks across the country, is funding the Oculus Pavilion restoration as one of five public-space incubator grants.

Mah says the $36,000 restoration grant is not enough to cover the full cost of the project, but is a great start.

According to Jake Tobin Garrett, manager of policy and planning at Park People, the restoration of the Oculus space is much needed.

"As our city in Toronto grows in population and in density, we really need to use all of the open spaces we have," Garrett told CBC News.

Garrett hopes "revitalizing [the Oculus] park pavilion to its former historic glory and also programming it and creating more of a community gathering space along the trail" will result in more activity at the "underused" space.

This is the second year that Park People has issued public-space incubator grants. The charity has selected five projects led by communities that have submitted proposals.

Mah said she expects the facelift to be completed by fall of 2020.

"These projects [like the Oculus Pavilion], because of their nature in being creative and innovative, take a little bit longer to kind of gestate and see them out in the world," Garrett said.