A documentary premiered Thursday night, but watching “Birmingham’s Front Lawn: 15 Years of Railroad Park” was more like family movie night.

The Lyric Theatre served as the city’s living room as filmmakers took the audience on a trip down Memory Lane, recalling how everything ultimately fell in place for 19 acres of greenspace, including nine acres of open lawn, to come to fruition in the heart of Birmingham.

Camille Spratling, executive director of the park, wore a medical mask in the audience. She was ailing and could not fulfill her role as moderator of a panel that followed the premier.

But she couldn’t stay away. Cheryl Morgan, FAIA Emerita professor and director of Auburn University Urban Studio, was Spratling’s stand-in.

“The film is really magnificent,” Morgan said. “The filmmakers have done a great job. The thing that they did that’s particularly important to me is they went back and told us how it happened. They went back to really remind us about how all the players were important in keeping the conversation going, that this was going to be an important opportunity for Birmingham.”

The Railroad Park Foundation celebrated the 15th anniversary last month with a picnic at the park, which is credited with sparking an economic renaissance downtown.

“The evidence is all around the park in the form of big residential buildings, restaurants, entertainment spaces, none of which would be possible without the investments made at Railroad Park,” Birmingham City Councilor Crystal Smitherman said at the time. “It’s an anchor for the surrounding area, which used to be an industrial blank space and now even bears the name ‘Parkside.’”

William Gilchrist, who was a panelist Thursday night, is the former director of planning, engineering and permits for the city of Birmingham. He called Railroad Park the recognizable face of the city, not unlike the Empire State Building in New York, the Eiffel Tower in France or the Coliseum in Rome.

“For Birmingham, it is Railroad Park,” said Gilchrist, now the director of planning and building in Oakland, California. “Usually, if I’m seeing someone interviewed in the city of Birmingham, it’s Railroad Park that’s behind them as a scene.”

Panelist Renee Kemp-Rotan, the former director of capital projects for Birmingham, called the events and people that yielded Railroad Park “a miracle,” a “harmonic convergence (that) doesn’t happen often.”

That convergence yielded a “constellation of stars” that brought together Director of Planning Bill Gilchrist, Mayor Bernard Kincaid, Kemp-Rotan and others.

“As head of capital projects, my job was to advise the mayor on opportunities and potentials of city-owned land,” she said. “I landed in the right spot at the right time, just as an urban designer, and basically brought Friends of the Railroad District into a full partnership with the city.

“We literally cosigned the design agreement for landscape architecture with Tom Leader,” Kemp-Rotan said. “It was a wonderful convergence of talent, of design philosophies and also wanting to do something meaningful for Birmingham. Don’t forget, at one time, public parks in Birmingham were totally segregated. It was on the books in the city charter.”

The film recounted that there were projections of “doom and gloom” when it came to Railroad Park. “There were a lot of people who needed convincing,” someone said.

Deontèe Gordon is president and CEO of TechBirmingham and was a founding member of Railroad Park’s junior board. The panelist said Railroad Park affected the psyche of the city.

Gordon said park designers were smart to not block the view of the railroad. That decision, he said, gave Birmingham permission to be the best version of itself.

The film concluded with a nod to the late Giles Perkins, who in 2005 served as president of the Friends of the Railroad District. The memorial to Perkins drew applause from the audience.