Sometimes a park does more than provide shade trees and a place for children to play. Occasionally — once in a lifetime, some say — a park presents a rare opportunity to connect communities and create a gateway to a better life for residents.
That’s the goal of the Southern Gateway Park, deemed “a park with a purpose,” under construction over Interstate 35 East adjacent to the Dallas Zoo.
April Allen, president and chief operating officer of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, is leading the development of the 5.5-acre Southern Gateway Park.
“There’s something almost magical about being able to turn this idea — an idea that didn’t exist before — and have something really tangible to demonstrate not only that it’s happening, but it’s a concrete way that we can reconnect our community,” Allen said.
The park is backed by powerhouse philanthropist Lyda Hill and numerous local charitable organizations. It will no doubt change the face of local real estate in the area, too.
“The addition of the park as a significant public amenity is likely to increase property values in the surrounding neighborhoods and create development pressure, according to a project overview posted on the City of Dallas website. “The City should work proactively with area stakeholders to establish a neighborhood housing strategy that includes affordable housing incentives for new development, reassessing the area’s zoning, and mechanisms to prevent displacement for residents east of I-35.”
Southern Gateway Park
Work is already underway on the highway improvements that accompany the project, but the timeline for the park’s construction is unclear, according to city officials.
“The historic infrastructure investment … will knit West and East Oak Cliff back together and catalyze transformation in Southern Dallas,” city officials said in the Department of Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization’s “This Is Our House” July newsletter.
The plan, according to the Southern Gateway Park website, is to create a central gathering space where everyone is welcome.
“Spanning I-35 East between Ewing and Marsalis avenues, the future five-acre bridge park will reconnect historic Oak Cliff and ignite environmental, economic, and community revitalization,” the site states.
Southern Gateway Park, combined with Texas Department of Transportation’s highway reconstruction, is the largest capital project of its kind in the history of southern Dallas. About $47 million is dedicated to infrastructure. Design and construction costs for the overlaying deck park are estimated at $35 million. About $7.1 million was set aside in Dallas bond funding.
The economic development it will spur, city leaders say, is priceless.
“There’s no way on earth you can build something like this and it’s not going to have spillover benefits to the surrounding communities in the form of economic development,” said Mayor Eric Johnson, who has made parks a top priority in his final term on the Dallas City Council.
Park With a Purpose
Champions of the park say it will bring communities together that have been cut off for decades.
“With this project, we really have an opportunity to demonstrate and grow our city in a more equitable way,” Allen said. “The idea of having a park over a freeway came decades before it actually happened. Dallas is a can-do city where we have these big ideas and we are persistent at seeing them come to life.”
Southern Gateway Park will benefit the entire City of Dallas, Allen added.
“I think even people who live in North Dallas can feel good about the fact that we’ll be growing our tax base and so the burden of keeping our city going isn’t being felt by such a small percentage of the population,” she said.
Dallas’ first Black mayor Ron Kirk also has championed the project.
“I look back historically to the beginning of Dallas’ renaissance after the Kennedy assassination,” Kirk said in a short video on the Southern Gateway Park website. “It started with [former] Mayor Erik Jonsson’s goal for Dallas, which was the first public acknowledgment and iteration of the fact that we have short-changed our citizenry in the southern sector for too long.”
The park is a literal gateway to the ninth-largest city in the U.S., Kirk added.
“This is going to be our new welcome mat, our front door to Dallas, that everybody coming to Dallas from south to north is going to see,” he said. “These opportunities come along once in a lifetime. This Southern Gateway deck park is going to lead to more private and public investments of a level we’ve never seen.”
