CEDAR RAPIDS — Greene Square is pretty ready for Saturday’s downtown’s Fire & Ice Festival.

Good thing. Many of the festival’s activities will unfold around the Square, which had been Greene Square Park before its nearly $2 million transformation.

Parks and Recreation Director Sven Leff said Friday that work crews had been hustling to finish construction for the season and take down fencing in preparation for the holiday celebration.

Some final work on the project will take place in the spring, including the placement of a $200,000-plus sculpture on the lawn that stretches from the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art on one end of the Square to the public library on the other. For this winter, yellow rope will remain to keep people off new sod, Leff said.

Leff said the transformation of the park into the Square has made the block-sized spot seem bigger than it had seemed before. By spring, he said the park will turn colorful as the trees and flowers come into bloom.

“You get a picture of a nice day where people want to be outside,” Leff said. “I think you’re going to find a pretty activated park. You’ll find people enjoying the sun, lounging in the grass, having lunch or doing work.

“That’s really the goal. Not just to have a different seat configuration than you had before. But actually have something interesting that brings people out.”

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City Council member Scott Olson, who works downtown, said Friday he has stopped by the park often in recent months as the work on it has progressed.

“It’s nice to have it open again,” Olson said.

Come spring, he said it will be particularly attractive with the sculpture, flowers and water feature.

“It’s like when you go to the big cities, like New York City and Chicago,” he said. “You go to those ‘pocket’ parks, and they’re packed.”