Dallas Gets a First Look at Designs for Five New Neighborhood Parks

Dallas Gets a First Look at Designs for Five New Neighborhood Parks

Renderings and designs for the first five of an eventual 15 new parks were unveiled by the city and the Trust for Public Land's Texas branch Tuesday. The effort will bring green community spaces within a 10-minute walk for thousands of residents.

Last year, Dallas jumped five spaces in the Trust for Public Land’s annual ranking of city park access, making it the second-best city in Texas after Plano. It also places Dallas at 38th in the country for park access. Roughly three-quarters of residents live within a 10-minute (or less) walk to a park.

But three-quarters and second-best aren’t 100 percent and first, so last year, the city and its “Greening Czar,” Garrett Boone, worked with the Trust’s Texas chapter to take a look at 2,800 parcels of city-owned land, seeking potential locations for new parks as part of the Dallas Greening Initiative. The primary criteria: look for plots in neighborhoods without parks. The Trust found 15 and began work on five soon after, meeting with the communities that would use those parks to tailor the amenities to suit. On Tuesday, the Trust revealed renderings of the proposed designs for those first parks.

Five of Dallas’ newest parks will be at High Vista Drive and Marsh Lane in North Dallas, across the street from the Pleasant Grove Branch Library on Lake June Road, Cotillion Drive in Far East Dallas, on Bushmills Road in North Lake Highlands, and Echo Lake Drive in the Kleburg neighborhood of southern Dallas. All five parks are in neighborhoods where between 2,000 and 4,000 residents don’t have a park within a 10-minute walk. 

“The Dallas Greening Initiative is an innovative approach to bring access to the outdoors to more people across the city,” Trust for Public Land Texas Executive Director Molly Morgan said in a statement. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who has made parks one of his missions during his tenure, called it “another major step” toward becoming a “national leader in urban park development.” 

These parks will also make use of smaller parcels of land—the smallest is a third of an acre, and the largest sits on 3.6 acres. The total cost for the five parks is about $2.5 million, which comes from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act funds and donations from the Lyda Hill Foundation and the Meadows Foundation. The greening project is estimated to cost $10.25 million, or about $750,00 or less per park. 



The designs received extensive community input. The urban placemaking nonprofit Better Block brought its “park in a box” to some locations so residents could get a feel for what their park could look like. The Trust for Public Land also asked the community what they wanted. Landscape architecture firm Studio Outside incorporated all that feedback into its design plans. 

The Trust says the Dallas Greening Initiative will eventually allow more than 54,000 Dallas residents to walk to a park in their neighborhood. Each park is designed for minimal maintenance costs, and the Trust will allocate 10 percent of the capital budget for upkeep. It will also form neighborhood volunteer groups to support that upkeep. 

Boone says the parks will bring numerous benefits to the neighborhood—everything from better mental and physical health to crime reduction. “Neighbors across Dallas are going to have access to improved social and environmental benefits that parks, trails, and greenspaces can provide,” he said in a statement.

The 15 parks have been divided into three 18-month cohorts and should be completed within five years. Groundbreaking for the first five will happen this summer.

Source: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2025/02/dallas-new-neighborhood-parks-trust-for-public-land/