Can the ‘Ugliest Building in Dallas’ Become the Gateway to a 200-Acre Trinity River Park?
Long-standing efforts to turn 200 acres of the Trinity River floodplain into a huge city park depend in part on the old building of the Dawson State Jail in Commerce. Closed since 2013, the building sits near the east embankment of the river as something of a somber memorial to the mass incarceration (Lew Sterrett is right across the street) and an absolute eyesore near downtown. The Dallas Morning News, with good reason, called it the ugliest building in Dallas. The Trinity Park Conservancy, which is commissioned with the realization of Harold Simmons Park, describes it as a potential “gateway to the park”.
The organization has now started reinventing the former prison, collecting feedback and hosting listening sessions to ensure that “the community has power in this project because of the lack of trust in previous projects,” says Jeamy Molina, Director of the Conservancy of Communications. So far, the Conservancy has heard from community design advocates and downtown residents, as well as Lew Sterrett workers and people previously incarcerated in Dawson.
“Because this was a closed place, people want it to feel open, they want to feel nature,” she says. Others have mentioned how the building could connect with the neighborhood and the planned park, or described the need for spaces for art and culture. Another issue, says Molina, was the desire to have to reckon with its dark past every time the building was redesigned. Before it closed, the privately operated prison was considered a brutal place with very few windows and no outside areas.
The Conservancy commissioned the architects Weiss / Manfredi with the redesign. And to help with the engagement that’s happening right now around the old building at 106 W. Commerce, the Conservancy has partnered with Colloqate, a New Orleans-based design justice practice that was part of the successful move towards Confederate Statues in New Destroy Orleans. “They helped move monuments to cities that don’t necessarily belong there,” says Molina. And the company’s track record shows its commitment to building inclusive, people-centered spaces.
Last summer, Bryan Lee Jr., founder and chief designer of Colloqate, wrote for Bloomberg CityLab about how the built environment of our cities can be used to suppress – or liberate – people.
For almost every injustice in the world, there is an architecture that was planned and designed to perpetuate it. This is a key principle of the Design Justice movement on which I build my practice. Design Justice tries to dismantle the privileges and power structures that architecture uses as an instrument of oppression and sees this as an opportunity to imagine radically just spaces that are geared towards the liberation of disinherited communities.
This built-in suppression takes many forms. It is in the planning decisions targeting non-white communities for highway projects and “urban renewal programs” designed to divert economic benefits from existing residents. It’s a design philosophy that has turned neighborhoods into mazes of “defensible space” that often criminalize blackness under the guise of security. And it is due to the proliferation of public spaces, which often do not allow certain cultural communities to congregate without fear of harassment.
The Dawson State Jail is undoubtedly a monument that doesn’t belong here. Can it be turned into a radically just space?
Molina says the Conservancy, along with Colloqate and the other architects and designers, will have listening sessions throughout spring and summer well into fall. I will update this post as soon as these are planned. And you can directly share your thoughts with them in the meantime.
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