Blue skies, a warm (but not scorching) sun and just the right touch of crispness in the air practically begged Terps to leave their study carrels, offices and residence halls on Friday and rejoice in the pleasure of being outside. A new, and temporary, mini park on campus offered the community the ideal place to indulge in the September splendor.

Its location? A block of parking spots on Preinkert Drive, just outside Queen Anne’s Hall.

As part of the global Park(ing) Day initiative, which encourages people to temporarily repurpose curbside parking spaces as parks, UMD’s Department of Transportation Services’ BikeUMD, the campus’ student chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Student Planning Association and Terps for Bike Lanes turned the metered spaces into a space where people could sip coffee, play cornhole and learn about the important role public parks play in communal well-being.

“It’s about showing how we can interact with the space differently than (we) typically would,” said McKenzie Fei ’23, vice president of UMD’s ASLA chapter.

Playing on a café theme, organizers sold coffee and doughnuts, offered secondhand art and design books donated by UMD Libraries and set up games like life-size Jenga and cornhole. (Funds raised went toward covering the costs of an ASLA trip to a San Francisco conference.) Artificial turf turned the pavement into a grassy oasis, and DOTS invited guests looking for a smoothie to hop on their Bike Blender, a stationary bicycle that powers the kitchen accessory.