Your first look at Oak Cliff’s I-35E deck park master plan and why this project is a national model

Today, I’m bringing you your first look at the master plan for Southern Gateway Deck Park, a green space that mirrors the limestone escarpment of Oak Cliff and the lush tree canopy as it unfolds over Interstate 35E next to the Dallas Zoo.

The just released designs and renderings for this park between Ewing and Marsalis Avenues play with the crooked topography of our city: almost all of the rolling hills, deep streams, and crusty cliffs and ridges of Dallas are in the southern half. North of I-30 and the Trinity River, it’s nothing more than flat, flat, flat – all the way to Oklahoma.

“The community would like to celebrate Oak Cliff as this escarpment overlooking the prairie of North Texas,” said HKS architect Yavar Saremi. “Many parts of the park are elevated to create the same experience on multiple levels.”

SWA Group’s landscape architect Chuck McDaniel, who lives in Oak Cliff, said, “We have heard repeatedly, ‘be authentic to the place and the diverse group of people who live in this community.'”

The symbolic restoration of Oak Cliff’s new park – neighborhoods that were blown apart by the construction of the interstate in the late 1950s – is also exactly the model the rest of the country must see in light of the discussion about infrastructure needs in Washington.

Mayor Eric Johnson, who grew up in West Dallas and Oak Cliff and is now the leader of a city that still has too many opportunities, told me the park fits in perfectly with President Joe Biden’s call to improve public infrastructure to address injustices correct neglected communities.

“This project is exactly within that framework,” said Johnson on Monday. “Not only are we doing what is necessary to connect these communities from a civil engineering standpoint, we’re also doing things within the park to raise that equity.”

Justice is as important to the creation of this park as the concrete that is poured, said April Allen, president of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation. The green space will be both a gateway to south Dallas and “a gateway to the beginnings of more opportunity for the neighborhoods,” she told me.

The park design is about restoring part of the destroyed district and giving it back to the community. That starts with a new canopy made from more than 250 trees and other native plants, especially those that attract native birds and butterflies.

The disconnected neighborhood will be re-established by the 12th Street Promenade, a pedestrian walkway that runs from one side of the park to the other and is lined with interactive information about notable past and present residents of Oak Cliff.

Phase one of this public-private partnership includes extensive lawns and the many program elements that neighbors believe were most important: a stage and pavilion, a children’s playground and interactive water features, outdoor classrooms for schools and organizations, a multi-purpose building, integrated exhibitions in the terraced “historical staircase” and its own food truck area.

The park will bring together two communities that have developed independently for 60 years. To one side is the historic Tenth Street district, one of the last intact freedmen towns in the country, and other long-thriving neighborhoods. On the other side is the bustling Latino community exemplified by the atmosphere on Jefferson Boulevard.

“We will pay homage to the different cultures so that they feel they belong here and take responsibility,” said Saremi. It’s a park back to nature, but also one with bright colors, inspired by textile designs from different traditions.

This rendering of the first phase of the Southern Gateway Deck Park in Dallas shows the multipurpose building, 12th Street Promenade running from the lower left of the rendering to the multipurpose building, and the terraced seating area.(HKS / SWA group)

The children’s playground is a great example of the HKS and SWA’s dedication to being authentic Oak Cliff. McDaniel described it as “a playhouse in the woods,” with devices made from natural materials and a floor with inlaid giant leaves and identification information.

The State Department of Transportation had just started construction of the park’s deck structure when I wrote about the project last July. This work is now 50% complete.

Construction of the actual park will begin in autumn 2022 with the opening of the first phase in 2023. The schedule for the second phase depends on whether the financing of the infrastructure is secured first.

Allen, a resident of Oak Cliff, told me that everything about the design contributes to what makes this “park with a purpose” unique – both in topography and in use.

For example, a 9,000 square foot flexible-use building will provide space for Oak Cliff entrepreneurs to do business. The area intended for food trucks can also be used as a deployment point for mobile ambulances.

While the design and renderings are new to most of us, the park’s neighbors have already seen the plans, part of the consistent community engagement that has underpinned the work.

“We’ve waited so long for a major project like this one that might also spur economic development and housing improvements – it’s all overdue,” said Lester Houston, president of the 3,500-home Zoo Creek Park Neighborhood Association.

Oak Cliff residents April Allen, president of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, and trustee Lester Houston, who is also president of the Zoo Creek Park Neighborhood Association, at Lester's home.Oak Cliff residents April Allen, president of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, and trustee Lester Houston, who is also president of the Zoo Creek Park Neighborhood Association, at Lester’s home.(Lynda M. González / photographer)

“This highway was so tragic because it divided these neighborhoods,” he said during our interview in his family’s long-standing home. “But now we have a park that puts it all back together.”

Houston, one of the early directors of the Southern Gateway Foundation, receives weekly calls through the park, many of them from residents who remember when the city abruptly took over the neighborhood’s Thomas Hill Park for a zoo expansion more than 30 years ago.

He enjoys answering a hearty “yes” when these roommates ask, “Are you telling me that we will have a place to walk to?”

In 1960, Houston, then only 4 years old, moved his family from the State-Thomas neighborhood, now known as Uptown, to East Oak Cliff.

After graduating from Roosevelt High School, he moved, first serving in the U.S. Marines, and devoting his career to social work and community organization.

He lived in some of the top cities in the country for over 40 years – New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and DC Land, moving back to Dallas six years ago.

“I could go anywhere I wanted, but I’m so glad I made the decision to return,” he said. “We are very proud of Oak Cliff. That wasn’t always clear to me. “

Houston first heard about the deck park during a meeting in the Oak Cliff Chamber and then spoke to the city council about his desire to make the green space a reality.

That caught the attention of one of Oak Cliff’s then councilors, Scott Griggs, and Houston soon received a phone call asking if he would like to join the board that was forming.

Houston loves the design of the park, which he believes is “real Oak Cliff,” and credits the architects with a “bottom-up approach that got people involved in the game early on.”

He believes the community’s involvement has allayed early concerns – that the park would be gentrified or that donors would not support a project south of Interstate 30.

“People are looking for progress in their neighborhood, especially people who have lived here for decades,” he said. “And they think this park will offer that for a change.”

Houston said he even had to confess something his younger self never thought possible: “I’m so proud of Dallas. Dallas is actually changing, I see progress. “

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