Over the past few months, as the city’s focus has been diverted by the convulsions of pandemic and protest, plans have progressed behind closed doors on the proposed Trinity Park in ways that promise to both symbolically and literally reshape Dallas.
In that time, the Trinity Park Conservancy, the nonprofit overseeing the park design and construction, and its lead project designer, Michael Van Valkenburgh Architects, have settled on a preliminary design for a large overlook park on top of the west levee, straddling Commerce Street.
The conservancy has begun a national search for a “visionary architect” to “reimagine” the Jesse R. Dawson State Jail, the 10-story, 238,000-square-foot, beige-block eyesore on the opposite side of Commerce that is one of the most visible gateways to the city. The conservancy purchased Dawson and the land linking it to the Trinity last year, as a part of the plan to extend the park into the city.
It will take quite a bit of imagination to remake Dawson, which is not so much a work of architecture as an obscenity in three dimensions. It opened in 1997, built at a cost of $39 million by the Houston developer North Village Corp. From the outset, it was run by the Corrections Corporation of America (now rebranded as CoreCivic) and was notorious for its poor conditions. One federal lawsuit alleged that a female prisoner’s premature baby died after she was delivered into a toilet. It was closed in 2013.
A remaking is an opportunity to address that history, and the broader issue of systemic racism in the justice system that the Black Lives Matter protests have thrown into such striking relief. The conservancy envisions it as a “visual anchor and hub” for the future park and also “a place of healing” for those coming and going to the adjacent Dallas County justice complex across Commerce Street. Determining how such a project might occupy a 10-story concrete block with grim and less than flexible interiors will be a considerable challenge. Giving the building a less odious exterior appearance is the least of the obstacles; determining a program for the building, and then accommodating it, will take far greater feats of vision.
Architects submitting for the job must have their applications in to the conservancy by July 23. A selection will be chosen from a group of finalists by Aug. 7. There will be no public review, an unfortunate state of affairs, given legitimate concerns that, over the years, decisions on the Trinity have been made in closed settings and without broad public consent. A park can’t pull the city together if the process by which it is made is not fully inclusive.
Plans, meanwhile, have progressed considerably further on the West Overlook, a proposed destination park and playground perched atop the west levee, with views out over the Trinity flood plain and across to downtown.
The park, designed by MVVA, is divided by Commerce Street. Its two sides would be linked by a pedestrian bridge. On its west side, it would be bound by Beckley Avenue. The Conservancy has estimated its cost at roughly $45 million.
The signature feature of the south side will be a maze garden and a large “over/under” playground with customized elements — slides, tunnels — embedded into the landscape, all linked by meandering, shaded paths.
The north end will have more programming, including a cafe with roof deck; a civic plaza with an interactive water feature; a separate playground for water-based play with toy bridges and other quirky features; a swing area set into a ridged landscape with views of downtown and the levee; and a small theater, inspired by the German playground designer Günter Beltzig, that can be used for puppet shows, performances, classes, and other play.
“We’re going to be making future engineers and architects,” MVVA principal Matt Urbanski says of the imaginative play spaces.
For the present, MVVA and the conservancy have selected Austin-based Mell Lawrence Architects to design the cafe and roof-deck structure and an additional maintenance building in the park. Lawrence was chosen, without public input, from an invited pool of 10 Texas architects asked to submit for the job on short notice. The original pool was in fact just five, but several of the Dallas firms backed out due to the time constraint, and the field was expanded.
The selection process was flawed, to say the least, but the outcome is defensible. Lawrence’s architecture seems particularly attuned to the commission: His work is modest but modern, durable, respectful of context and humane in its details. “He had a really nice combination of practicality and creativity and collaboration,” says Elizabeth Silver of MVVA.
Lawrence has but one completed project in Dallas, but it is, appropriately, a park pavilion; specifically, the Cotillion Park Pavilion (2011) in Far East Dallas, a handsome rectangular structure of black steel with louvers to provide shade for the sun. It is defined by an elliptical steel mobile in orange red that floats above, twisting slightly in the breeze. Nearly a decade after its completion, it remains in excellent condition.
The park, along with the remade Dawson jail, will dramatically reshape the entry into downtown, transforming what is now an unremarkable journey into a dramatic scenic passage.
Traveling toward downtown from the intersection of Commerce Street and Beckley Avenue will mean ascending through a tree-lined valley up to the edge of the levee, with the Dallas skyline revealing itself fully at the apex. Instead of moving on toward the hideous jail block, there will be something new — a work of actual architecture that speaks to both the city’s future and its past.
It is not an accident that these developments are taking place on top of and adjacent to the levees, rather than between them. These projects do not interfere with the approval process for the Army Corps of Engineers’ $300 million Trinity improvement project, which includes reshaping the levees and bottoms.
The conservancy believes that the corps’ project will eventually be congruent with its own park plans for the area within the levees. According to the conservancy, the reshaping the corps does undertake will help it realize its own designs.
For the moment, however, the conservancy has its hands full, and Dallasites can look forward to seeing what comes of its respective architectural searches. And when the time comes to choose a path forward on Dawson, that public must be included in the decision-making process. Put that on lockdown.
