Parks for Downtown Dallas breaks ground on family-friendly Harwood Park
If the celebration of future Harwood Park on Tuesday had been a traditional groundbreaking ceremony, the job would have required jackhammers, not shovels.
Instead, Parks for Downtown Dallas invited about 100 guests to look out over an ugly 3.8 acres of concrete from the adjoining housing estate and watch it transform into a tree-lined, family-friendly oasis that connects the Main Street District, the Farmers Market, and the East Quarter in a new contiguous neighborhood.
“Share your disbelief and introduce yourself,” began Amy Meadows, President and CEO of Parks for Downtown Dallas, as she described the future: a sustainable rain garden, expansive green lawns, dog parks, a flexible sports field, and “ghost mammoth” playground structures that pay homage to a time when these creatures roamed northern Texas.
Construction is scheduled to begin on October 1st at Harwood and the park plans to open in the spring of 2023.
Robert W. Decherd, chairman of Parks for Downtown Dallas and chairman, president and CEO of DallasNews Corporation, which owns The Dallas Morning News, used some of his remarks to highlight the “incredibly sensitive design” of landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck.
“It reflects all the wonderful things about the Texan landscape,” he said, “and will also be the closest thing to an urban neighborhood park” among the parks for the four green spaces in Downtown Dallas.
During the groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday, East Quarter developer Shawn Todd (right) recognized the contributions that Robert W. Decherd, chairman of Parks for Downtown Dallas, has made to the core of the city over the past 40 years.(Tom Fox / employee photographer)
Mayor Eric Johnson noted the development of downtown from “a place to leave” to “a place to live, a place to stay”.
“It really is a neighborhood – one of the most beautiful in our city,” he said. “And it just scratched the surface of its potential.”
Kourtny Garrett, President and CEO of Downtown Dallas, Inc., said the completion of Harwood will limit the creation of 23 acres of new parkland in the city center over the past 15 years.
Not only has it added more than any other downtown US city during that period, she said that the now 90 acres of downtown green space is more per capita than many other cities.
“Thanks to great partners like Parks for Downtown Dallas and the City of Dallas, we are a national model for the design, construction and operation of city parks,” she said.
Harwood Park spans two boroughs, so Jesse Moreno from District 2 and Paul Ridley from District 14 were among the congratulatory speakers. With the other three parks for Downtown Dallas’s green space in District 14, Meadows Moreno has promised that Harwood’s grand opening ceremony will take place in the southern half of the park.
Ridley summed up the feelings of many when he discovered that those in attendance weren’t just there to celebrate the birth of a new park, but the “spirit of Dallas that made it possible.”
Just as Ridley ticked off the many obstacles the Parks for Downtown Dallas team had overcome, park chairman Calvert Collins Bratton pointed out that the job involves four mayors, four city managers, and too many councilors and park officers to count .
“This team is the definition of perseverance and investment,” she said.
The Harwood Park property acquisition was a complex challenge involving nine transactions for 15 properties. Parks for Downtown Dallas bought the land between 2014 and 2017 and sold it to the City in February 2021.
Since its inception in 2015, Parks for Downtown Dallas has worked with the city to build Pacific Plaza, which was completed in October 2019, and West End Square, which opened in March. Carpenter Park will be completed next spring; Harwood will follow in 2023.
The strategy for the four priority parks emerged from the Downtown Parks Masterplan from 2004 and its 2013 update, both of which were unanimously approved by the City Council and the Park Board.
Upon completion, each green space will be owned and operated by the Dallas Park Department. The projects will be funded with $ 39.4 million approved by voters in the 2006 and 2017 bond programs and $ 56 million in committed private investment.
Parks for Downtown Dallas is raising $ 25 million to support the four priority green spaces with the overall goal of raising $ 50 million for a permanent foundation to support downtown parks within the freeway loop.
“Let’s do some dirt,” said Decherd when the party ended on Tuesday afternoon.
But first the jackhammers have to come.
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