With a cut of a ribbon, Kathy Norwood saw a dream come true.

And as visitors, children and patients moved their way through the shade and the sun Friday morning, stepping over different surfaces and touching different stations, finding new activities and new obstacles, that longtime vision, at the Permian Basin Rehab Center, had been fulfilled.

The PBRC dedicated its new outdoor therapy center with a grand opening Friday in Odessa, completing a project years in the making and opening doors for patients unlike anything that was offered before.

Dozens of supporters attended to celebrate the opening of the center that had been in the works as an idea since 2010, and had been fundraised for three years before ground broke on the area last summer, said Norwood, PBRC’s director of Development and Marketing.

“We have such a wonderful community that supports the rehab center and our patients, and it was very humbling,” Norwood said via phone later Friday after the grand opening.

“It was Christmas morning for me.”

The new outdoor center is situated outside the PBRC building in downtown Odessa, and features playground equipment that therapy patients can work to jump over, balance on and crawl through, along with an in-ground trampoline, a bicycle path and a musical garden. There’s also strength-building equipment for adult patients like parallel bars, a putting green that can help with hand-eye coordination, and a car that patients can get in and out of, buckling and unbuckling.

Norwood said she has worked with PBRC since 1995, and that this was the biggest project she’d been a part of with the organization.

“It offers therapy in a totally unique way,” Norwood said. “Most therapy is done inside or in a gym or in a room. This is doing therapy in an environment that patients are confronted with and challenged with every day.

“Not having such a nice, sterile environment — You’ve got opportunities to take chances, and even if you fail the first time, you try again, and then when you succeed it’s pretty significant.”

Norwood said the idea for the outdoor center was first hatched in 2010. “It’s been a long dream,” she said, adding that there was no other center like this that designers could find to follow.

After initial planning, she said organization board members put down seed money in 2014, and from there, the group started raising money and applying for local grants.

“I had a child give me 25 cents for it. I had kids give me $2. People giving $100, $500; anywhere from a quarter, to $100,000,” she said.

Eventually, the project hired an architect three years ago, she said, and broke ground on construction in late July of 2017.

Now, 10 months later, the vision has come to fruition, and will start assisting patients and therapists in new ways, with new obstacles to be presented and new goals to be achieved.

“I think they’ll make progress faster,” Norwood said. “What you do all day long when you’re a therapist, is you’re asking your patient to do something they can’t do, or they can’t do very well. Or you’re trying to help them regain what they lost through an accident or a head injury.

“You’re always making that demand on them, that challenge. This is going to be such a unique space with such functional activities that I think it will help goals be met faster; I think they can have higher-level goals.”

It’s been years in the works, but after Friday, those new goals can finally be reached for, and obtained.

“It was very emotional,” she said of the opening.

Katie Lindner kisses her daughter 2-year-old Kori Young during the dedication. The Permian Basin Rehab Center Outdoor Therapy Center held their dedication and grand opening Friday.

Mark Rogers|Odessa American

Executive Director Kim Ortega talks to the crowd during the dedication. The Permian Basin Rehab Center Outdoor Therapy Center held their dedication and grand opening Friday, June 1, 2018.

Mark Rogers|Odessa American

2-year-old Luciana Illas plays one of the musical instruments. The Permian Basin Rehab Center Outdoor Therapy Center held their dedication and grand opening Friday, June 1, 2018.

Mark Rogers|Odessa American