It might be one tiny piece of open space, but this week east Lawrence residents are treating the pocket park at Eighth and Rhode Island streets like a national park.

“We don’t know the full acreage. Actually, that’s in dispute right now,” joked KT Walsh, a nearby resident.

Really, the area is only about 1,050 square feet, sitting just east of the parking lot behind the Hobbs Taylor Lofts.

It is designated as a public area and has detailed landscaping, city planners explained, but the area is not maintained as a city park.

On Halloween night, in full costume and with much silliness, neighbors dedicated what they call the “Percolator Pocket Park,” named for a group of artists known as the Percolators.

“We had a ribbon-cutting, and I led a wilderness tour,” said Heidi Zeller with a laugh. “We had wall climbing and hiking. We had a lookout station. There’s plenty of wildlife in the park.”

The wall, of course, is about 3 feet tall at its highest point.

“We had ropes and carabiners. To this day, no one has ever made the summit,” teased Walsh.

Walsh can laugh about it now, but at one point, she said, most of the block was open space.

“We used to be able to hear the music from the Bottleneck at night, because this was all open space. That was lovely,” she said. “We really worked hard to get some green space, and Bo Harris, the developer, was really cooperative on that.”

Organizers hoped the dedication would draw attention to the park.

“We wanted to make it a real public space, someplace the citizens of Lawrence could enjoy,” Zeller said. “We see it as open space as incredibly important to any city, so we want it to be used by people for fun.”

The developer is maintaining the park.