Last week, I researched a case study of Klyde Warren Park, a 5.2 acre, 1,186 foot-long, public highway lid park in Dallas, Texas. It is a really inspiring project in many ways — it creates healthier urban living conditions by reducing noise and air pollution, adding pedestrian connectivity, and significantly reducing urban temperatures. The park is an urban ecological corridor, increases urban biodiversity, and increases permeable surface area for stormwater management (LAF did an awesome case study with many more specific details, see here). However, there’s some financial complexity that leads me to wonder how a more just version of the project might be implemented elsewhere.
I was interested in this project because I’d heard the term “land bridge” a few years ago during a summer job with the City of Saint Paul. Community leaders in Saint Paul are engaging neighbors and developing a plan for building a land bridge across I-94, to reconnect the neighborhood of Rondo. In the 1960’s, the construction of the interstate divided Rondo, part of the larger U.S. context of urban renewal and coinciding with the Federal Aid Highway Act. Construction cleared 700 homes and 300 small businesses. The highway physically divided neighbors in Saint Paul’s largest African American neighborhood, which was — and is — a tight-knit neighborhood that had built community around local businesses, homes, and churches. Rondo celebrates its history annually at Rondo Days, one of many events where residents share input on the project. Read more about Rondo’s history and the ongoing land bridge proposal here.
Now that I’ve researched Klyde Warren Park, I am very curious to learn more about funding models for the Rondo project.
Klyde Warren Park is named for the child of a Dallas-area billionaire, Kelcy Lee Warren, whose wealth was built by the oil industry (chairman and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners). Warren’s donation was approximately $10 million dollars, which is a huge sum of money, but only about 0.42% of his total net worth of ($2.4 billion dollars). A search for “average net worth of a millennial” gave me the number $8,000. So, for the average millennial, this would be a $33.33 donation (but after donating, you still have approximately $2.4 billion left over!). Because of this $10 million dollar donation, young Klyde Warren (who was 9 years old at the time of the opening, now maybe 17), has legacy status in Dallas.
The cost of Klyde Warren Park before opening was about $100 million, and maintenance is approximately $5 million per year. Both the park’s building and maintenance is funded through public-private partnership (PPP), a term I’d heard before, but didn’t understand the mechanisms (and still am wrapping my head around this). PPPs make some really important projects happen, but they also feel like a bit of a euphemism. In the case of Klyde Warren Park, private investments make possible higher real estate prices, which in turn are a source of funding for the park in the form of a Public Improvement District, or PID. The PID is a tax collected from local property owners, which is pooled and spent on a designated project. However, this increased property value limits the opportunity for a true public to live near the project and reap its benefits on a daily basis, so I question the meaning of the word “public” here.
The audience of the park is intended to be public as well. Though I haven’t visited, it sounds like there are a few mechanisms that limit the public who visit the park. From the Klyde Warren Park FAQ, regarding bathrooms: “Yes, we have restrooms in the gated Children’s Park for families with children (currently closed due to COVID-19). There are public restrooms for all guests next to Relish on The Porch.” Though these may be technically public, gates and restaurants aren’t great indicators of “public.” This sounds suspiciously similar to some of the privately-owned public spaces that are difficult to find, and realistically not all that public (see here, a Medium article about some of San Francisco’s hidden POPOS).
The many many programs of the park are a result of an abundance of stakeholders and donors (see LAF: “lessons learned”). All of the park’s programming is free, which is a long-term priority of the park, but it is likely that the selected programs will influence who uses the park, who is employed by the park, and who feels welcomed at the park. James Burnett, the lead landscape architect on the project, describes the park as a regional park rather than a local park. 80% of visitors come by either public transit or car, meaning it serves the larger Dallas area region (see his presentation here).
Klyde Warren Park’s origins are in real estate development, so the project is rooted in specific values. The local Real Estate Council introduced the idea and funded the feasibility study, and now that the project is complete, the city and designers speak of the project’s success in pulling residential development into downtown Dallas, creating an image of a lively, amenity-rich, and social place to live. The funding model matches this goal.
In the case of the Rondo land bridge, the aim is to reconnect an already social and well-loved neighborhood, and to (begin to) make right on an incomprehensible loss. It’s necessary that residents stay. The Rondo project is not about attracting new residents or increasing surrounding property values, so the use of this space needs to be determined by community members, not stakeholders. As a funding model, public-private partnerships have great potential, but stakeholders must be willing to remove their own agenda from the negotiation and trust community members to use the funding, since only they can know what is best.
Despite my critique of Klyde Warren Park, I think the land bridge concept is wonderful, and there is clear evidence of the project’s success in terms of physical and mental health and as an environmental infrastructure. I think our most important task as landscape architects is to support health — both mental and physical. Klyde Warren Park succeeds in providing a sense of openness and active circulation, reduced stressors like noise pollution, improved air quality, and the park reduces the urban heat island effect. Local temperatures dropped by an average of 1–9 degrees Farenheit following the park’s construction! Lower urban temperatures probably make neighborhoods more accessible for more people — particularly seniors — making for healthier inter-generational neighborhoods. This temperature reduction is really important in cities like Dallas — and even Saint Paul — where summer temperatures can become physically dangerous, especially as the climate changes. I also admire the resourceful use of infrastructure and space— Klyde Warren park shows that we can coexist and learn from infrastructure while centering culture and ecology.
I am very inspired by this approach of resourcefulness and multi-purpose infrastructure, and it’s a general philosophy that I’d like to take to other projects as well.
UC Berkeley’s Future History’s lab hosted a conversation about the neighborhood on Oct 23 (which I missed because of class, but look forward to catching once it’s posted).
