When the State Fair of Texas comes around in the fall, its namesake park in South Dallas comes to life.
Football fans and concert goers fill the Cotton Bowl and Dos Equis Pavilion.
When Fletcher’s corny dogs aren’t in season, Fair Park remains quiet the rest of the year, visited only by a few museum lovers and power walkers.
That’s something that the city has spent decades trying to change.
The Dallas City Council on Wednesday will vote on the updated master plan for its 277-acre property. When council members got their first glance at the plan last week, they applauded the infusion of green space in what is now more parking lot than actual park.
“Fair Park is one of our city’s greatest assets, but it’s also one of our most underutilized," Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement on Tuesday. "This master plan is an exciting and important step toward making the park a year-round destination and, at long last, a gathering place for the South Dallas community.”
The council’s vote is only the beginning of a decades-long process to transform part of an area the city bulldozed in the early 1970s to make way for parking, erasing a community of homes and businesses belonging to Black families.
Now, after years of meetings between park developers, neighborhood stakeholders and nearby residents deeply aware of the park’s controversial early history, this is the closest the city’s come to giving that space back to the community.
Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, an urban planning and park redevelopment company, is overseeing the design for the 14-acre Community Park planned along Fitzhugh Avenue.
The long-anticipated green space is one of the elements of the first phase of the $58 million project, and it will replace the existing parking lots east of the Dos Equis Pavilion.
In addition to the Community Park between Exposition Avenue and Gaisford Street, the first phase of the makeover includes a parking structure near the Music Hall to compensate for the removal of surface parking lot spaces.
“There are certain areas around the lagoon and the esplanade that have lawns and shady trees, but a lot of Fair Park is paved,” said Ashley Langworthy, BRV’s western region director.
“This will help bring that softness and park-like atmosphere.”
The firm’s resume includes Klyde Warren Park in Uptown, Levy Park in Houston and New York City’s Bryant Park.
Once the Community Park is completed, the company will plan events that will be free and open to the public.
Langworthy said the specifics haven’t been sorted out yet, but the goal is to bring arts and culture to the park on a regular basis.
“Things like free fitness classes, yoga, meditation, boot camp, storytelling hours and puppet shows, live music, movie nights,” she said.
Last year, the firm and Fair Park First, the nonprofit that manages Fair Park, held pop-up events that included yoga and food trucks on the site to test programming.
Even in the Dallas heat, Jason Brown, a Fair Park First board member, said the events were well attended.
“We’ve definitely seen an increase in engagement," Brown said, “and that’s only going to continue.”
Brown, who grew up in Fair Park, said the interest in redeveloping that area is “long overdue,” especially after the city has given it “the short end of the stick” for so long.
When Brown, 33, returned to Dallas after college, he said he “could’ve chosen to live anywhere.”
But he went back to Fair Park because it’s a city “treasure.”
Lives upended
In the 1960s, the city of Dallas destroyed a thriving Black community to make way for parking at Fair Park.
A consultant hired by City Hall in 1966 submitted a report that said people didn’t want to visit Fair Park because Black residents devalued the area. It said that City Hall should “eliminate the problem from sight.”
Years later, the city bought around 300 homes for significantly less than market value from Black families and bulldozed them to make room for what is now parking lot space bound by Gaisford Street and Fitzhugh, Pennsylvania and Second avenues — 52 acres total.
Businesses disappeared, too. Lowe’s, a barbecue restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue near First Avenue, used to have a front-row view of Fair Park’s roller-coasters.
Decades later in 2018, the city chose Fair Park First to manage the park along with its for-profit partner, Spectra.
Representatives from Fair Park First, Spectra and BRV attended more than 100 meetings held by neighborhood associations, churches and other community organizations, listening to ideas and concerns and incorporating their input into the master plan.
“Fair Park has symbolism in this city as segregation and racism and a systemic reason for why a lot of the surrounding communities ... have their guard up and want to make sure this park is something that belongs to them,” Adam Bazaldua, a council member who represents the Fair Park area, said last week.
When executives from the partnership presented the updated master plan to the Dallas Park and Recreation Board this summer, support was unanimous.
“We cannot fail these neighbors who have lobbied and advocated and poured blood, sweat and tears into this area for so many years and gotten only empty promises,” Calvert Collins-Bratton, the Park Board president, told The Dallas Morning News after the June vote.
Fair Park’s future
The Dallas City Council must sign off on the proposal because it owns the land to be redeveloped.
After that, the real work will begin to raise an initial $58 million for the first part of the project, which includes the Community Park. The goal is to transform the parking lots and finish the park and accompanying lot by 2024.
Bazaldua said last week that the redesign will make the park an “asset for the community instead of something that sits predominantly vacant for the majority of the year.”
Council members Omar Narvaez and Cara Mendelsohn joined Bazaldua in offering to support the fundraising efforts.
Jennifer Gates and Casey Thomas also expressed enthusiasm, adding that they hoped the dollars would come in.
Thomas called the plan a “beautiful display of what you heard from the community.”
The ultimate goal is to transform the entirety of Fair Park — but that will cost millions more and likely take at least two decades to accomplish.
Brian Luallen, executive director of Fair Park First, confirmed that additional fundraising campaigns would follow after they meet their first goal, but it’s too early to know what the future benchmarks will be.
Ryan O’Connor, assistant director of partnership management and sponsorship for Dallas Park and Recreation, told council members last week that $2 million has already been raised for the project.
He added that in the coming weeks, they would announce four “notable” donors with whom they’ve been working.
“It’s kind of a self-fulfilling cycle,” Langworthy said. “As you do more, then [donors] are assured that you’re moving forward and there are some real plans behind it. ... But things are moving forward.”
The park department and Fair Park First have hired Rise 360 to raise money for the project.
Ben Casey, who works as a consultant with Rise 360, said last week that even with the “philanthropic competition” in Dallas, he was confident that they’d hit the $58 million goal because of Fair Park’s historical significance.
For his part, Brown said he looks forward to seeing the future of Fair Park.
“It’s exciting to see a lot of other people taking interest in this neighborhood," he said. "There are a lot of people who want to see Fair Park prosper.”
