Parks nonprofit sees groundswell of support after Harvey
Bayou Greenways project continues to connect trails
John H. Duncan Sr. has lived in Houston 90 years, but he felt he was seeing the city for the first time one crisp morning this fall during a helicopter tour of the Houston Parks Board’s expansive Bayou Greenways 2020 project.
Flying low and slow along eight bayous that snake through dense neighborhoods, commercial clusters and strings of industrial complexes, Duncan could see the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey: Flood debris still littered streets. The eroded, silt-covered banks of Buffalo Bayou, especially, looked like wide, deserted beaches.
He was more surprised to see how green the city appeared.
“I was just astounded how much prettier the city
was than it seems when you’re dodging traffic on the freeways or flying over in a plane,” he said.
Most of the parks the philanthropist witnessed were not the central, marquee destinations that have fueled all of the national talk about Houston’s green renaissance in recent years. The hundreds of smaller parks that dot the urban landscape are actually more important to the future of the sprawling city, for several reasons.
They are links in the chain of a complete ecosystem that would put all residents within a 10-minute walk of a park — a national standard that Mayor Sylvester Turner has embraced with his Complete Communities initiative. And, as Harvey’s widespread devastation demonstrated, the city needs all the flood retention space it can get.
The helicopter tour exposed Duncan to a number of parks he had never visited and knew only by name, even though his donations may have helped create them.
To the north, along Aldine Westfield Road and Hall’s Bayou, the city-owned Keith-Wiess Park spread across nearly 500 verdant acres — including a remnant of pine forest and land that held a dairy farm in the 19th century. To the south, just east of Texas 288, Harris County Flood Control District’s Hill at Sims Greenway — a 200-acre regional water detention facility with hike and bike trails — also glimmered. Connecting bayou trails
The private, nonprofit Parks Board has helped to improve more than 250 parks across the city since it was founded 41 years ago. Small-scale successes such as the West 11th Street Park, Jaycee Park and Oak Forest Park led the group to undertake the $220 million Bayou Greenways project in 2012, partnering with the city’s parks department to connect 150 miles of bayou hike and bike trails.
To date, the board has built 14 miles of new trails, with about 65 to finish, that close gaps between existing trails built by various entities — including Harris County and the Harris County Flood Control District — and give them continuity and common standards.
Well before Harvey hit, the board hired consultants to develop another master plan, Beyond the Bayous, for an even more complete, north-south grid of trails and green space that tie into the east-west bayou trails.
Since the storm, there’s broad consensus that the board’s citywide work is more important than ever, said executive director Beth White.
She sees a groundswell of support among elected officials, communities and investors for keeping the green space coming; and she believes Harvey’s effects influenced the passage of Proposition B in November, which included $109 million for city park improvements. White expects the board’s work with the Harris County Flood Control District and its many other partners to intensify as they share data about potential buyout areas where new bayou trails and green spaces make sense.
The storm gave them a guide to “low-hanging fruit,” she said.
White sees Keith-Wiess Park as an ideal model for flood retention that can be both beautiful and useful for recreation. She also said the board is already considering Harris County’s 362acre Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza Park on Eldridge Parkway, just southeast of the Barker Reservoir, as a “perfect example of a future Beyond the Bayous connection point,” because it’s just a few blocks from Brays Bayou.
But more modest green spaces are also necessary, and easier to acquire. ‘Peace of mind’
A case in point is the recently transformed, 7-acre open space in northwest Houston where De Soto Street dead-ends into White Oak Bayou. That’s where the city demolished the abandoned, crime-infested Oakbrook Apartments in July 2016.
Area youth have marked off a soccer field at one end — the board didn’t want to dictate what would go there, preferring to see first how communities use the open spaces they are given. Closer to the bayou, it recently seeded wildflowers that will bloom next spring.
Parks Board asset manager Dan Howse designed the simple landscaping with low-maintenance Bermuda grass, inserting a few “wet swales” of native grasses and perennials around the old drainage infrastructure, where water pools. Next week, the city will add some shade, planting 40 cedar elms and 46 white oaks.
The board also built a concrete path to the adjacent White Oak Greenway trail, a nearly completed project that stretches 16 miles from downtown to the city limits. The De Soto site sustained about 4 feet of floodwater during Harvey but has recovered nicely.
“It’s above and beyond what I could have ever expected there,” said District A City Council Member Brenda Stardig, who has organized efforts to demolish several dangerous apartment complexes in the area. She wanted to eliminate blight and reduce crime, but she’s thrilled to see the new park also drawing the community together, outdoors.
This stretch of De Soto is still a work in progress: The evenlarger Candlelight Trails complex was demolished before the Oakbrook units but remains in limbo, and between the two properties, another problematic complex is still occupied.
Maria Gomez, who lives across the street in the Hunters Cove apartments, walks the path to the greenway trail every day. She loves the irises, crinums and coneflowers that bloom in the wet swales. Her apartment has room for only 16 plants, she said. The park’s blossoms also remind her of a favorite garden in her native town of Puebla, Mexico.
“It’s very beautiful, and if one walks, it gives you peace of mind,” she said.