2,000-Acre Park Plan Takes Center Stage

It's trees not greenbacks that have today's attention from Dallas officials, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, the Dallas Plan and the AIA Dallas chapter. The initiative is to build a Central Park setting or one comparable along the Trinity River to turn it into an aesthetically useful close-in anchor.

"The build-out would take a good decade to realize most of the vision," Alex Krieger, a leading urban consultant for the privately funded initiative, tells GlobeSt.com. Another 6,000 to 8,000 acres, positioned outside the park's project area, are included in the ongoing round-table talks to tap what is Texas' premier resource, an abundance of land.Dallas City Hall is the staging ground for the one-day power meeting, "Imagining Dallas: Gardens for the City, Gardens for the Soul." Gail Thomas, the institute's city and conference director, has steered the high-powered meeting funded by private checkbooks from all income levels, representing the mutual concern for the property's protection. "Dallas needs to be a city of gardens," Thomas said in a press release.

Krieger, of Chan Krieger in Cambridge, MA, will be joined by co-consultant for the Trinity River project, George Hargreaves of Hargreaves & Associates in San Francisco. Also on the agenda is Betsy Damon, creator of a living water garden in Chengdu, China. Dallas names taking the podium are Robert Decherd of the Downtown Commons Plan and Raymond Nasher for the Nasher Sculpture Garden. Rena Pederson of Dallas will lead a panel discussion.

Krieger and Hargreaves last week presented their initial concept to council, primarily focusing on the acreage inside the Trinity River's levee. Krieger says Dallas has the opportunity, with the land that's available, "to become the largest urban park of any city in North America." In contrast, New York City's Central Park is 800 acres; the Mall in Washington, DC, 500 acres; Golden Gate Park, 1,200 acres; and Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, 1,400 acres.

Another seven miles of floodway, passing through center city neighborhoods, are ripe for "economic reinvestment," Krieger emphasizes. "We want them to turn themselves (properties in the proposed redevelopment corridor) toward the river instead of turning their backs on the river," he says.