Parks for Downtown Dallas held the groundbreaking of a brand new park blocks away from the Dallas Farmers Market on Tuesday. The event had about a hundred guests gazing down from the adjacent development onto the landscape of what would soon be the family-friendly Harwood Park. Guests looked at 3.8 acres of concrete which is in the works to turn into a tree-filled family-friendly oasis that connects the Main Street District, Farmers Market, and East Quarter into a new cohesive neighborhood.
“Suspend your disbelief and imagine,” Amy Meadows, president, and CEO of Parks for Downtown Dallas, said, describing the future, which entails a beautiful green space. According to Meadows, the park is meant to have a sustainable rain garden, sweeping green lawns, a flexible sports court, dog parks, and “ghost mammoth” playground structures that make a reminder of when these creatures were in North Texas.
Parks for Downtown Dallas has been working on a master plan that features four priority parks in the City of Dallas. The Harwood Park project will make the final park in the priority park programs. The other parks include Pacific Plaza, Carpenter Park, and West End Square.
According to the president and CEO of Downtown Dallas, Inc., the completion of Harwood will open up twenty-three new acres of park space in the core of Dallas over the last fifteen years. That, she said, is more than any other downtown in the U.S. put together during that time. She further revealed that the 90-acre downtown greenspace total is more per resident than many cities of Dallas’ size and density.
Robert W. Decherd, the chairman of Parks for Downtown Dallas, Inc, who also serves as chairman, president, and CEO of DallasNews Corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News, emphasized landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck’s “incredibly sensitive design.” In his words, “It reflects all the wonderful things about Texas landscape.” He further stated that the park would be more like an urban neighborhood park than the other parks in Downtown Dallas’s four greenspaces project.
Parks for Downtown Dallas is raising $25 million for the support of four priority greenspaces. The organization is also working on raising $50 million to acquire a permanent endowment for the support of downtown parks within the freeway loop.
