Party at Buffalo Bayou Park pushed back until the fall
A grand opening celebration for the renovated Buffalo Bayou Park west of downtown has been delayed from June to the fall, but park boosters aren’t panicking as the city’s newest marquee green space peeks its head above water following this week’s floods.
The decision to push back the park party was made Friday, Buffalo Bayou Partnership President Anne Olson said, days before severe storms turned the creek at the center of the 160-acre park into a river. The torrential rains submerged miles of hike and bike trails, lighting, benches, pavilions and a new dog park.
Not much damage
The delay was prompted by months of persistent rain that often made the park too muddy for construction equipment, Olson said. And the storm itself ? So far, she says, no big deal.
“Everything that we’ve ever designed has been designed to go underwater,” Olson said. “This was extreme, but certain areas of the bayou flood regularly. All the benches and trash receptacles are iron, and they’re bolted. The special lighting fixtures were designed to be buried into the ground, and they’re heavy concrete. We don’t anticipate a lot of damage.”
Guy Hagstette, project manager for the $58 million park renovation, said that as the water receded Wednesday night it revealed a damaged section of asphalt jogging path on the north bank near the Jackson Street bridge. Though that section of path will be closed temporarily, he said, few other problems of note have been found. However, receding water could reveal other problems, he said.
The bayou reached its sixth-highest crest during this week’s storms, at 33.7 feet, according to data from the National Weather Service’s flood warning system in the bayou at Shepherd Drive, the western edge of the park. That crest compares to a 40.2-foot reading during 2001’s Tropical Storm Allison, the thirdhighest mark; the record crest occurred in 1935, at 49 feet.
“It is designed to accommodate floods, and you have to understand that the work in the bayou started from way below the water line, stabilization and working back, flattening some of it out to have more capacity,” Mayor Annise Parker said Wednesday. “The only thing I’m worried about really at this point is as they clean it off (is) there are lights down there and whether the electrical components made it through.”
Time to clear debris
Hagstette walked the accessible parts of the park Wednesday morning and found even the landscaping in decent shape. The work is funded in large part by the Kinder Foundation, with help from the city of Houston, the Harris County Flood Control District and the nonprofit Olson leads.
Some young trees have been bent over but can be righted, Hagstette said. A larger tree fell along the Memorial and Waugh cloverleaf. A minor sinkhole, perhaps 25 square feet and a foot deep, has formed over what he assumes is a damaged drain pipe in Eleanor Tinsley Park.
Mostly, though, “we have a big mess to clean up,” he said. “It’s a big park and there’s a lot of silt, and there’s debris. It’s just going to take some time.”
Recently opened Johnny Steele Dog Park will be closed until debris is cleared. The trails are considered open, though muddy, as long as they’re not submerged, he said.
Hagstette said his biggest concern is whether three small areas that showed risks of eroding near the asphalt jogging path have worsened with the flooding. One of the three was visible, he said, and seemed no worse than before the storm. He also shares Parker’s concern about water damaging the electrical system.
“The park may be fairly dark for a while both because we’re being cautious and then in some areas we may end up having a problem where we have to keep the lights off until we dry things off or replace a part,” Hagstette said.
A date has not been set for the fall grand opening.