When Is a Park More Than a Park?

When is a park more than a park?

Halperin Park in Oak Cliff offers an answer to that question. Touted as “A Park with a Purpose” by its creators, it spans Interstate 35 adjacent to Ewing Avenue. Phase I of the park opened on May 9 and comprises approximately 2.8 acres. Phase II will stretch the park south to Marsalis Avenue, encompassing a total of 5 acres when completed.

Both public and private funds financed the project, including $32 million from Dallas’ 2017 and 2025 bond packages, combined with a gift of $23 million from the James and Gayle Halperin Foundation. A total of $300 million will be needed to complete both phases. This investment is expected to generate $1 billion in economic development over the next five years and attract up to two million visitors annually.

For comparison, Klyde Warren Park is currently 5.2 acres, with plans to expand another 1.7 acres to North Akard Street. The 2009 to 2012 expense was approximately $200 million, with the latest expansion slated to cost an additional $122.2 million, the bulk of which is the 24,000-square-foot indoor exhibit space.

Halperin Park will always be compared to its older sibling, but the two deck parks were created with different goals in mind. At the time of its creation, Klyde Warren Park was built in a vast residential desert, while Halperin Park is in one of Dallas’s oldest neighborhoods. Scarred and separated by I-35 in the 1950s, the “Park with a Purpose” helps unite the historic Tenth Street District and the North Oak Cliff neighborhoods, creating a physical and symbolic bridge between the east and west sides of the Oak Cliff community.

A walk through the park grounds during the opening checked off all the expected deck park elements—an outdoor amphitheater, a bandshell, food truck parking, splash pads, interactive fountains, a playground with a climbing wall, a great lawn element, and an indoor air-conditioned pavilion labeled as a “restaurant” on park maps. The ample use of stained wood glulam beams on the bandshell structure and wood restaurant columns adds warmth to the otherwise hard, yet textured, undulating concrete walls that flow around the park structures.

A rooftop plaza offers views of Oak Cliff and Downtown Dallas and can be accessed by an ADA-compliant ramp spanning the east side of the park. As it rises to the plaza level, the ramp also defines the edge of the Great Lawn on one side and the playground space on the other.

Halperin Park is located immediately west of the Dallas Zoo. The zoo parking lot is available for visitors—for a fee of $14 per car. During the grand opening, April Allen, president and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation and the main proponent for the creation of Halperin Park, indicated that parking areas are a priority moving forward. Currently, no other parking serves the park.

It remains to be seen if Halperin Park will embody its given identity as “A Park with a Purpose” and unite, both physically and emotionally, what the freeway tore apart. As the park grows to include Phase II, the neighborhood embraces the park, with peripheral development, and park usage increases, the scar should fade, but it will take time to undo 70 years of separation in a young city like Dallas.

Oak Cliff has a long history of hosting some of the city’s best (and largest) parks. Halperin Park now joins Kidd Springs, Stevens, Lake Cliff, and Kiest as its newest and most purposeful park.