Does Klyde Warren Park Really Need a Parking Garage?
For the July issue of D Magazine, on newsstands now, I wrote about the park-building boom downtown Dallas has enjoyed over the last decade. Theres Main Street Garden, Civic Garden (formerly known as Belo Garden), Pacific Plaza, and West End Square. Carpenter Park and Harwood Park are on the way. Theres Klyde Warren Park, of course, the 5.2-acre deck park built over Woodall Rodgers and opened in 2012. As a rule, people like parks, and people really like Klyde Warren Park. Kids like the fountains and playgrounds, adults like the food trucks and public space and yoga classes. Downtown pedestrians like how it stitches togetherover a highwaythe Arts District and Uptown. The city and developers like how it drives up neighboring property values. On Thursday afternoon, I left the office and walked over to the park to sit at a shaded table, eat a cookie, and watch people go by. It was the best 30 minutes of my week. (Much of the money for the $100 million expansion is coming from TxDOT, private donors, and possibly federal grants.) Grade the relative success of each of downtowns newest parks individually, and youll find some nits to pick. But overall, park-building is a potential boon for the city center because it gives downtown something it badly needs: greenery, walkable public space, and a break from the monotony of car traffic on one-way city streets. Many of these parks have literally supplanted parking lots, as clear a symbol as you could ask for of Dallas turning away from the auto-centric mindset that has often kept downtown from being what it should be. These are shared, open spaces where anyone is welcome. Maybe thats why Klyde Warren Parks expansion feels like Dallas could be screwing up the good thing weve got going. The plans for the expansion prominently feature a parking garage and a new building that will among other things house a center for VisitDallas, the citys recently beleaguered visitors bureau. (Update, 1:30 p.m.: While previous reporting on this has characterized the structure as a parking garage, a spokesperson for Klyde Warren Park says the new building in the expansion will only include about 15 parking spaces exclusively for people working at the structure.) Thats a lot of closed-off space, although the plans do call for some new greenspace in the form of the Jacobs Lawn. The expansion would grow the childrens park while adding an ice skating rink that would be in use in the winter. Better street connections in the direction of the Perot Museum are also part of the deal. (All of which would complement the similarly controversial super fountain that is in the parks future.) Klyde Warren Park demonstrated that Dallasites want more places to come together and an urban core that enhances walkability, the Dallas Morning News Mark Lamster wrote in 2018. But this new expansion proposes the opposite: It is a garage with a private event space, and public amenities are the afterthoughts. More to the point, theres almost no park in this park  the additional space there would be is cut off from the rest of the park by the new structure.  Boosters have said the parking garage is necessary, and that renting out the enclosed pavilion included in the new construction will help fund the parks operations. The park is owned by the city, but managed by a private foundation that pays for its upkeep. Renderings do make the expansion look like a great spot for your companys next corporate retreat.