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A 44,000-square-foot indoor horse arena has opened in Fairmount Park in time for its first public event this weekend, the Philadelphia Arena Polo Championship.

McCausland Arena was built by Work to Ride, a youth development program in Fairmount’s Chaminoux Equestrian Center, with $15 million in public and private funds. It is named after the McCausland family, whose Lafayette Hill–based foundation contributed $3 million.

Work to Ride founder Lezlie Hiner has spent nearly 30 years trying to get it built.

“Our mission is to serve Philadelphia youth using sports and horses,” Hiner said. “We were limited because when cold weather comes, kids don’t want to be outside in the freezing weather in December, January, February and March. This right here will allow us to expand our programming tri-fold.”

Hiner said McCausland Arena is one of the largest horse facilities in the tri-state area, and one of the premier indoor polo arenas in the country.

“We have all kinds of accoutrements that most indoor riding rings don’t,” she said, pointing to the viewing platform with bleachers, additional seats in a second-story mezzanine and dozens of large-scale, louvered windows that can make the arena nearly open-air in good weather or closed off for inclement seasons.

The huge steel roof trusses of the arena allow it to be completely free of support structures that might otherwise obstruct the space. Hiner plans to make the arena available for rentals, including non-horse events.

“It’ll be available for anybody that wants to utilize the space,” she said. “It’s for the community.”

What does Work to Ride do?

The Work to Ride program focuses on underserved young people in Philadelphia’s urban areas, teaching them to care for and ride horses.

One of its standout participants is Kareem Rosser, who came up through Work to Ride to become a national polo champion. Rosser is currently on the U.S. Polo team and is competing in the Federation of International Polo Arena World Polo Championship next month in Virginia.

Rosser is also the executive vice president at Work to Ride. He said seeing the arena finally open has been an emotional ride.

“The process was very daunting and long, kept us up at night wondering if this actually would be possible,” Rosser said at Wednesday’s ribbon cutting. “It’s an emotional day. You saw many of us, including myself, shed a few tears.”

Horses, to many, trigger emotions.

Councilman Curtis Jones, who helped secure roughly a half-million dollars in funds for the arena, said Work to Ride gives a boost to young people with few other prospects in life.

“They got that start here because Leslie took them to places they had never ever seen before. They came back changed because of it,” he said. “A horse can tell a lot about you when you’re on their back. They can feel your energy. They can help you through emotional exchanges.”

Elizabeth McCausland Salata, vice president of the McCausland Foundation, said she was an avid horse rider as a girl.

“There’s a wild freedom that, to me, only a child can feel when they’re on a horse. It’s something that we lose as our age makes us too careful or too cautious,” she said. “That magic is something Lezlie took and transformed into something more than riding. Work to Ride is a place for opening doors, building confidence and creating opportunities that shape young people’s lives.”

Even Hiner choked up remembering when she first dreamed of building a state-of-the-art horse arena in Philadelphia back in 1998, a time when financing made it little more than a pipe dream.

“I would go up to the horse sales to buy hay three times a week because I couldn’t write a check for more than $400,” she said, pausing to collect herself. “Look at where we are today.”