Bayou Greenways project nears completion with push from Ellis
$220M plan boosts residents’ access to parks, miles of trails
There could come a day when Houston is known for its many miles of trails and green spaces — as well as its phalanx of freeways.
One of the nation’s largest park undertakings, the $220 million
Bayou Greenways 2020 plan encompasses 3,000 acres and 167 miles of trails and park improvements along nine bayous that course through the city. When the work is complete, 1.5 million Houstonians will live within 1.5 miles of greenways, parks and hike and bike trails.
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis on Monday pledged up to $7.4 million of mobility funds to build trails in low- and moderate-income areas in the Greens, Halls, Hunting and Sims Bayou watersheds this year.
“I’m glad to be a closer,” Ellis said. His planned projects will bring trails and critical flood control improvements to Greater Greenspoint, east Houston, the Eastex-Jensen Area (including the Homestead and Kashmere Gardens neighborhoods) and South Acres (including Crestmont Park and Minnetex).
Houston’s mother lode of park
projects in recent years has been a boon for development — also bringing gentrification and higher housing costs — but the greenways projects have embraced park equity from the beginning.
Mayor Sylvester Turner called Bayou Greenways 2020 the single biggest down payment on park equity in Houston’s history, noting voters’ overwhelming support of the initiative with a $100 million bond fund in 2012. The Parks Board has raised the rest, starting with a $50 million gift from the Kinder Foundation.
Parks Board President and CEO Beth White said planned greenways projects will be 94 percent complete or under construction by year’s end, a considerable achievement given the interruptions of severe flooding that have occurred in the eight years since the plan was adopted. “Our engineering and design is working,” White said. “What we’ve become really good at is flood cleanup.”
To celebrate its milestone, the board is staging two major public events this spring, partnering with the parks department to present the free Sights & Sounds festival on April 4 and the first Art Bike Parade in conjunction with the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art on May 9.
The April festival will unfold along a 2-mile stretch of White Oak Bayou between Stude Park in the Heights, the Near Northside and the University of Houston-Downtown. Star rapper Bun B is among the headline performers, although magicians, jugglers, acrobats and poets will populate the entire length of the festival. The Art Bike Parade will move down Allen Parkway to Sam Houston Park, as a twowheeled version of the Orange Show’s annual Art Car Parade.
‘Very Texan’ scale
An avid bike rider who travels the trails regularly, Ellis also laid down a challenge on Monday. “What’s next?” he said. “It doesn’t stop here.”
Most of the greenways work has happened inside the city limits in partnership with the parks department and/or the Harris County Flood Control District. But watersheds begin much farther out, in unincorporated but developing areas where populations are increasing, Ellis said.
He wants Harris County to commit, as the city and its philanthropists did, to continue the work and to help connect existing trails north to south, perhaps through utility easements. “These waterways all go the same direction, and we’ve got to connect them,” he said. “We need to think big.”
“We think urban greens pace is such an amenity for the city,” said Rich Kinder, co-founder of the Kinder Foundation. “It’s important for physical and mental health, and it’s critical for attracting a new generation of professionals who want to live in Houston.”
As with other major park projects they have funded, he and Nancy Kinder gave the lead Bayou Greenways 2020 gift on condition that the Houston Parks Board commit to keeping new trails usable and clean, so they wouldn’t strain the city’s alreadystretched budget. “It’s always a sexy thing to build a park or trail, but it has to be maintained … and they’ve done a good job,” Kinder said.
The board now maintains 2,300 acres of Bayou Greenways across the region. Its conservation and maintenance team mows regularly, plants wildflowers and native grass seeds, clears litter and debris, removes graffiti and does flood cleanup (which alone during the last three years has cost $3 million).
“It’s very Texan to do it at this scale,” White said. She came to Houston in 2016 from Chicago, where she directed the national
Trust for Public Land and oversaw the development of Chicago's innovative, 3-mile elevated trail system, the 606.
‘An energy of happiness’
White also is thinking for the future, and she knows that green space does not have to abut bayous to serve communities. “We’re here for the long term,” she said. “What do we do with all these neighborhood parks?”
The Parks Board contributes to dozens of small parks that also have programming, security or other needs. “Every community is different,” White said. “It doesn’t have to be a capital improvement.” White has also seen people across the region take ownership of parks as they learn to appreciate them.
That work stretches into places many people don’t see, such as Burnett Bayland Park on Chimney Rock. On Saturday, Maria Hernandez picked up trash there and pulled weeds in a butterfly garden that was designed and installed with help from the Parks Board.
Hernandez and other volunteers from the group she founded, Madres del Parque, have met at Burnett Bayland on the second Saturday of each month for nearly four years now. They initially were concerned about child safety in the park, which was trashy and unkempt, Hernandez said. The city was emptying trash cans, but the park was strewn with plastic bottles that now get picked up and recycled.
Hernandez was surprised by how much she enjoyed the work and to see how the park could become a magnet for the diverse community. “It’s so powerful to involve the community more with nature, especially kids,” she said. “Working with nature makes you a more compassionate human being.”
Picking up trash and weeding are small tasks, she added, but being outside gives her “an energy of happiness.” The group asked if they could have a butterfly garden added to the park because to send message about transformation, she said. “It’s what we’re doing in the community.”