The Trinity River bottoms have been known for many things over the decades. It was the former site of racial murders in the 1860s, a “Tent City” for people protesting the 1984 Republican National Convention and a geographical dividing line between Dallas’ business elites and the city’s most vulnerable communities.
But a significant chunk of that land is now being turned into a new 250-acre park and nature preserve.
The team working on the project says Dallas doesn’t have anything like what the Harold Simmons Park will be. The park will cost more than $300 million to build and could draw four to five million visitors once complete.
“By scale, I would say Harold Simmons Park has the potential to be Dallas’ Central Park,” Trinity Park Conservancy CEO Tony Moore told KERA. “But I will actively say after that statement…we have to earn it.”
But its development also comes as the city faces several hurdles — including homeless encampments in city parks and a lack of resources to respond to the underlying issues that force people into unsheltered situations.
Moore said once the park is built the greenspace will have a nature preserve in the river floodway and four “overlooks” on either side of the river.
Those overlooks will include amenities like skate parks, water features and event spaces — plus they will connect visitors with the preserve below. But there are two separate construction cycles — one for the overlooks and one for the preserve.
The floodway portion of the park is being overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers. While it may take just three years to build the overlooks, Moore says the preserve has a different timeline.
“We are still anxiously waiting for the Army Corps of Engineers as they will work around that floodway, so that is on a different construction cycle,” Moore said. “But it is still the very center of the park and the largest.”
The Army Corps are working to “widen and flatten” the levee that protects against flooding in the area. Moore said that construction is focused on “public safety flood mitigation” — and the recreational preserve will come later.
That nature preserve will be around 200 acres of the greenspace. The overlooks total roughly 50 acres.
“The largest of the overlooks is what we are calling the West Overlook,” Moore said. “That is approximately 22 acres of land and that will be the most built environment of the entire park.”
That demolition process started in late October and consists of removing structures from the area.
“It was a symbolic start of the construction process,” Moore said. “That will be followed up somewhere in spring with an official groundbreaking.”
Except for the nature preserve and a planned overlook across from the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, the rest of the park should take around three years to build.
“We’re not talking massive years of separation…and so we are hopeful that in the first three years we will get the majority of the overlooks built,” Moore said.
He added he could not speak to the timeline of the Corps of Engineers’ process.
Advocates say the park development is a welcome project — one that’s been discussed since the early 1970s in Dallas. But the Trinity River has long been cited as a dividing line between downtown and historically underserved communities in West and southern Dallas.
The addition of thirty-foot-high levees in the 1920s, added to the separation.
“Whether intentional or not they did create these massive structural divides between downtown Dallas and…West Dallas,” Moore said.
West Dallas has seen more economic investment in recent years than it has throughout the city’s history and Moore says it brings unintended consequences. That includes displacement and gentrification.
“We would be negligent to just [turn] a blind eye and not be conscious of those social dynamics that are happening and so we work with community members to share our park and to see what we can do,” Moore said, and also added a park can’t stop the change that comes with more development in an area.
In early November, Dallas Parks and Recreation Department officials told members of the city council that there are hundreds of homeless encampments in city parks.
“Our entire operation is pretty much impacted by the unsheltered, the encampments and what we need to do as it is related to making sure our parks are clean and well maintained,” M. Renee Johnson, a park department assistant director, said at the time.
Officials said the city’s parks are open to anyone — if “everyone follows the rules.” That includes no sleeping or camping in the greenspaces.
Moore says the Harold Simmons Park will be open to everyone as well, assuming they follow certain rules as well.
“There will be codes of conduct that we ask that [unsheltered people] would behave and conduct themselves as any other guest but [they are] welcome to enjoy the park,” Moore said.
“However, at the end of the night the built environment will have what we call a ‘hard close’,” Moore added.
Park security teams — overseen by the Harold Simmons team — will do a sweep of the area to ensure everyone exits the park at the end of the day. Those teams will also monitor the facility afterhours too.
To Moore, not ensuring safety inside the park essentially hurts the facility’s brand.
“My measure of safety is the perceptions of stroller mom,” Moore said. “If stroller mom feels your park is safe, then so does the general populous.”
Moore told KERA his team is in the process of trying to partner with the city to work on the park too.
“The philanthropic donor community was the first to get this project going and will fund the build of this,” Moore said. “But the city and the civic participation is equally important to let Dallas know this is a Dallas-centric park for all.”
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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