Dallas has unveiled the locations of five new parks to be developed through Mayor Eric Johnson’s Greening Initiative.
“The city just took a major step toward achieving the goal of having a park or trail within a 10-minute walk of every Dallas resident,” said Mayor Johnson in his Sunday newsletter.
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) shared the five locations selected for new green spaces during a meeting of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board on Thursday.
The locations are as follows:
- 7327 Lake June Rd. (District 5)
- 2100 Echo Lake Dr. (District 8)
- 3749 Cotillion Dr. (District 9)
- 10600 Black Walnut Dr. (District 10)
- 3728 High Vista Dr. (District 13)
Mayor Johnson said the TPL, along with the Dallas Park Board, the Dallas Park and Recreation Department, and Greening Czar Garrett Boone, “worked for months to identify unused or underused city-owned properties that were suitable for park development.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Johnson appointed Boone last year to spearhead the Dallas Greening Initiative — a project aiming to bring new green spaces to all of the 14 City Council districts.
“While Dallas has become great at building large signature parks, I created this initiative last year to focus on gaps in the parks system by working to create smaller recreational gathering places for neighborhoods that need them,” said Johnson in the newsletter.
“And this week, this partnership announced a plan to move forward with transforming five vacant spaces into beautiful and much-needed neighborhood parks.”
The five locations were selected based on being vacant properties already owned by the City near residents who do not currently have “adequate park access.”
“The plan is to develop 10 more greenspaces in the coming years in communities that currently lack quick and easy access to existing parks,” added Johnson.
The next step for the TPL is community engagement, working with neighbors to determine what type of park would be most suitable for that location.
“I just want my neighborhood to be a place where we can really be neighbors,” Bryan Wallace, a resident who lives near one of the selected locations, told The Dallas Morning News. “This has so much potential, but it needs a little something before we can enjoy it.”
The mayor recently said Dallas has entered a “golden era of parks,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
