Levy Park’s new look is going to make you smile
I dare you to keep a straight face walking through the children’s play area of Houston’s reinvented Levy Park.
The padded green-andblue pathways make you feel giddy. Made of rubbery particles that were poured on site and made even bouncier thanks to an underlayer of recycled “rubber mulch,” they also are designed to make play safer.
The Upper Kirby District’s public space at 3801 Eastside reopens Feb. 25 with a full day of free activities and performances that include a concert by the Grammy Awardwinning Latin funk band Grupo Fantasma.
“Reopen” is a bit of a misnomer: Although the area previously had ball fields, a community garden and a dog park, Levy Park is now set to become a prime outdoor destination akin to Discovery Green, which has been a national model for well-activated public space since it opened about nine years ago.
The $15 million Levy Park project originated with the Upper Kirby Redevelopment Authority, which partnered with the city of Houston (the landowner), the parks department and Midway Companies to bring it to fruition. Midway’s 99year ground lease for the two commercial projects anchoring the public space will help fund park operations run by the Levy Park Conservancy.
Park director Doug Overman anticipates that nearby residents and employees will fill the space during weekdays, but he is also scheduling weekend “outreach programming” to attract visitors from farther afield.
“It’s important for us that the visitorship represents greater Houston,” Overman said.
The children’s play area — one of the 6-acre park’s largest sections — promises to be busy. Its paths lead to a number of other rompinviting, futuristic-looking features. There’s the “Cosmo,” a 14-foot buckyball with a web of stretchy climbing cables inside; and two large, artificial-turf-covered mounds. One has a climbing wall that leads to a 7-foot-wide waxed concrete slide. The other has short, LED-lit tunnels. Then there’s a “step chime” made of concrete tiles that produce sounds as you jump on them. And a three-tiered, bright-orange water feature.
Overman has already put holes in a pair of jeans testing the slide with his 3-year old daughter, Gaby.
Those who have visited Dallas’ Klyde Warren Park may recognize some of these enticements, which have been adapted and customized by the Office of James Burnett, which designed the landscape for both parks.
Some weekends, Klyde Warren — occupying a former overpass above the Woodall Rodgers Freeway — has been so jammed park officials have had to turn people away.
Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, the company responsible for New York’s redeveloped Bryant Park, consulted daily with
Levy Park Grand Re-Opening
When: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Feb. 25; ribbon-cutting with Mayor Sylvester Turner at 10 a.m.; Grupo Fantasma plays at 6 p.m. Where: 3801 Eastside, between Richmond and U.S. 59 Parking: On Wakeforest and Eastside, on park streets, and for $2 per hour at 2925 Richmond garage Info: All events free; levyparkhouston.org Overman during more than a year to develop a “rich and diverse” variety of activities across the park.
The curvy performance pavilion designed by Houston architect Natalye Appel hovers over Levy’s northern edge like a spaceship, facing a lawn that will hold a standing audience of 3,000 people. Overman envisions visitors having picnics there for symphony and dance concerts, lectures, movie screenings and simulcasts. Professional musicians often will be present, playing the park’s moveable piano.
The even larger “activity lawn” will accommodate temporary stages during festivals, but day to day, it will be used for fitness classes, lawn games and a putting green. More than 20 community partners have signed on to provide cultural and educational programs.
Community gardeners who previously were active at Levy Park can’t wait to return. They’ll have 27 raised garden beds framed in CorTen steel, a few of which also will be used by area schools.
Pet owners are already sneaking into the shaded dog park, which has turfcovered mounds and a water feature.
Visitors can linger wherever they want, using 600 movable tables and chairs; check out board games, art supplies and books and magazines and, if they must, immerse themselves in the world of their portable devices with free, parkwide WiFi.
Such amenities are “a real difference maker in a park,” Overman said.
Good food is also critical to the formula. Celebrity chef Tim Love will open a Houstonized version of his hit casual, Forth Worth smoke-based restaurant Woodshed at the park next year. By this fall, he hopes to open Love Bird, a kiosk serving rotisserie chicken, sides and drinks. And before that, a double-decker bus (in the midst of a beer garden) serving morning coffee and pastries and evening beer and wine.
Overman said Love’s success with Woodshed, which adjoins parkland along the Trinity River, made him the best choice to direct Levy Park’s concessions.
“The sense of seamlessness was important to us,” he said. “And he’ll be a great partner not just in the concessions but in what we can offer, parkwide, with festivals.” (Love is the official chef of the annual Austin City Limits festival and the producer of the Austin Food and Wine Festival.)
Overman says parking is ample, with 50-60 spaces inside the park, curbside parking on Eastside and Wakeforest, and 900 pay spaces in Midway’s parking garage. He has planned for traffic control but acknowledged, “We’re going to have to do a few events to trial-run it.”
Though Levy Park doesn’t have a river, it does have a rain garden that will be fed by drains from the rest of the park.
And the paths aren’t all that will encourage visitors to feel buoyant: An overlook boardwalk winds up near the canopies of a half-dozen of the park’s preserved old live oaks.
Up there, you don’t bounce: You fly.