Brent Brown is leading the charge to develop a park between the Trinity Levees (Photography by Danny Fulgencio/Advocate Magazine).
Brent Brown envisioned the 200-acre park between the Trinity Levees as a tool to mold Dallas into a more cohesive city.
“Yes, we are building a park, but we are also building a city,” the East Dallas neighbor said in September.
Brown is the president and CEO of Trinity Conservancy, a nonprofit instrumental to funding and designing Harold Simmons Park. The organization is part of a public-private partnership with the City of Dallas called a Local Government Corporation.
Featured in our October issue, “How East Dallas is shaping a $200-million park along the Trinity River” chronicled Brown’s vision for the green space and City Councilman Philip Kingston’s opposition to its development.
Now Trinity Conservancy has unveiled its plans for the park, which is adjacent to a floodplain and runs between the Ron Kirk Pedestrian and Margaret McDermott bridges. “There will be fields of wildflowers, fish in the water, and birds in the trees,” Dallas Morning News’ architecture critic Mark Lamster wrote in a recent column. “Flora and fauna will be selected with a mind as to what will survive within the variety of habitats and ecologies created within the levees, a catalog the architects have already begun to explore.”
The park also will feature a series of pedestrian bridges that stretch to the tops of the levees. “Here, easily accessible on overlooks above flood level, will be playgrounds, cafes, performance spaces, and other amenities,” Lamster writes.
Learn more about plans for the park here or here. The park’s groundbreaking is slated for 2020.
