the TRINITY?

for the space, including rewilding.

Historical Currents

On May 24, 1908, Biblical rain soaked Dallas with devastating consequences. A 1957 Dallas Morning News article described it. “The leaden heavens continued to send down torrents of rain as the day wore on,” causing the Trinity River to crest at 52.6 feet. It knocked out the city’s power and water supplies and displaced 4,000 people from their homes. A police horse drowned on McKinney Avenue, and three people died when the rushing water took out the railroad viaduct where they were watching the raging flow. The waters paralyzed the city for days.

Since the 1800s, the river has both frustrated and captured the imagination of Dallasites. In 1910, urban planner George Kessler designed a plan to unbend the river and build levees to prevent such a flood from happening again.

In the 1920s, engineers straightened the river, allowing it to flood between the levees and flow quickly downstream, protecting a Downtown that regularly flooded. Today, the Trinity runs in a straight southwest path just west of Downtown, dividing it from Oak Cliff. Most of the year, it remains a small band inside its banks, with expansive floodplains on either side and levees rising beyond. Every so often, heavy rains will cause the river to flood its banks, at times making its way up the levees.

Dallas leaders once envisioned a highway in the flood plain. Over a couple decades, Dallas and the infamous Trinity Toll Road were the Ross and Rachel of North Texas development. Voters approved it twice, but after East Dallas Councilwoman Angela Hunt led a charge against putting a highly trafficked road in a flood plain, public opinion and leadership turned against the toll road. The toll road plan had one last fling and finally was put to bed last year.

Other than simple trails along the levees and down near the river, the area remains relatively undeveloped. At one point there was an ill-fated $4 million “standing wave” installed into the river. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that feature made the river unnavigable, and the city removed it earlier this year at a cost of $2 million.

The latest vision is Harold Simmons Park, a 200-acre flood-friendly park between the le- vees, running from the Ron Kirk Pedestrian Bridge in the north to the Margaret McDermott Bridge in the south. The Simmons family donated $10 million toward the development of the park, with $40 million more to come if the organization meets governance and fundraising goals.

IF HOUSTON COULD DO IT…

The East Dallas neighbors who play key roles in the park’s development and direction don’t always agree what $200 million should pay for along the banks of the river.

What should a park that floods look like? There are precedents. Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston is made to flood and managed by a government and nonprofit partnership, though it is smaller. Buffalo Bayou includes nature trails, a dog park, a skate park and more, running along the floodprone bayou near downtown.

World-renowned landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh’s firm will be the landscape architects for the park, but the exact elements and design are still unclear and open to input from Dallas residents.

East Dallas neighbor Cris Jordan sits on the conservancy’s CommunityEngagement Committee, which has representatives from all over Dallas. Jordan says her role is about inclusivity for all of Dallas and getting the community to participate in the design and enjoyment of the park. “Harold Simmons Park will deliver the opportunity where the community can really engage and experience true urbanism as a park,” she says. “We get the message out and invite people into the process.”

Jordan knows that even though the park is not in East Dallas, the neighborhood appreciates the preservation and enjoyment of natural spaces. “We treasure our treasures,” she says.

The conservancy is seeking input with a series of events throughout the fall to ask the city how they use the space now and what they would like to see in the future. Hikes, bike rides and community meetings throughout the fall provide opportunities for attendees to share design ideas, better understand the timeline and learn how to get involved.

IS REWILDING THE WAY TO GO?

Not everyone is sold on the idea. District 14 City Councilman Philip Kingston has been a vocal opponent of the toll road from the beginning of his time on Council, and he doesn’t trust that the Trinity Park Conservancy is the right organization for the job.

Kingston says Brown’s CityDesign Studio showed support for a toll road. As proof, he notes that CityDesign Studio selected a plan for a contest, The Connected City Design Challenge, by a Spanish firm that included a toll road in its renderings.

“Brent Brown has no more cred in that job than Harold Simmons would have,” he says, referring to the businessman and philanthropist who died in 2013 and made millions storing and destroying radioactive waste. “It is in the hands of the same people.”

But Brown is proud of his connection to the Trinity plans. He says he never personally advocated for a toll road and is against one now. He is building out a team of local firms to advise on the construction of the park, including hydrologists and experts in blackland prairies.

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Kingston says the group’s working vision is coming from the wrong place, and he leans in favor of “rewilding” the Trinity. “They have a negative history of not being in favor of a vibrant natural space.”

City Councilman Scott Griggs of Oak Cliff says a simple park with a natural landscape doesn’t have to cost $200 million. “For rewilding, the money is already there. That would be so low-cost.”

Kevin Sloan, a local landscape architect on the park’s design committee, advocates for rewilding in other places, which he says is “any project that begins first by identifying the program of natural life” and would “accommodate permanent and migratory wildlife, wetlands and blackland prairie.”

Rewilding begins with the natural order of things rather than prioritizing humans. Sloan already is working to rewild an adjacent section of the river, which he sees as a good partner for Simmons Park. “Cross pollination between the two projects is happening.”

Brown wants to create access to the river bottom while connecting it to the community, balancing natural existence with recreational enjoyment. “It has to work in the context of flooding. Our approach is the most pragmatic to date.”

Brown says there will be urban access points, as well as natural parts of the park, including rewilding the wetlands and prairie. “To assume those approaches would be absent from Harold Simmons Park is false,” Brown says.

Over the next few years, neighbors will see whether the river that once paralyzed Dallas can transform into a green space for everyone. Brown says his organization wants to finish the design and break ground by 2020, completing the park in 2022.

“Trust is a huge factor,” he says. “We don’t expect people just to trust us. We don’t earn it by telling people, but by doing things, listening and evolving.”

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GASTON-GARLAND-GRAND

The intersection needs a redesign, but that’s about all neighbors can agree on

A CAR HEADING NORTH ON GRAND AVENUE IN EAST DALLAS cruises through the rolling green hills around Tenison Park Golf Course, moves to turn left on Gaston Avenue toward downtown. The driver is met with a convoluted situation.

When the left turn arrow indicates it is time to move, the vehicle proceeds onto westbound Gaston and toward Lakewood. But wait. A yield sign appears. Surely it can’t be for the turning vehicles; there are others behind it in the middle of the intersection. The yield must be for the cars turning right from Garland Road onto Gaston. Right?

Wrong. That yield is for the left-turn vehicles, causing confusion and accidents to reign at Gaston-Garland-Grand.

More than 30,000 vehicles pass through the intersection each day, according to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), and it desperately needs a redesign. Because

Garland and Grand are Texas State Highway 78, the redesign project is a collaboration between the City of Dallas and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), which is providing most of the funding for the project. The intersection also connects three city council districts, two Texas House districts and two Texas Senate districts, further complicating the matter.

TxDOT began holding meetings about the $5.3 million project in May 2016 and presented six options in a consensus building meeting

Neighbors Against Option 2

Neighbors For Option 2

later in the year. Attendees chose the “Reverse T,” which creates crosswalks, removes the protected right-turn lane from Garland to Gaston and does away with the straight-away lane that transitions from Grand to Garland, curving parts of the intersection to slow down traffic.

Advantages

Row Needed Existing Row Proposed Construction Proposed bridge Widening Proposed Overlay Proposed Sidewalk Possible Landscaping

Favors

Three lanes

The City of Dallas is contributing $1.1 million toward the project as well, and the staff submitted a letter of preference for the Reverse T, or Option 2. But no sooner had the design been chosen than neighbors started offering alternative options and complaining about what the plan would do to traffic in their neighborhoods.

Neighbors Against Option 2

Advantages

Grand/Garland

Gaston Avenue, asking neighbors to “Say no to Option 2” to keep children and streets safe. A group called the Lakewood Citizens for Responsible Traffic (LCFRT) is behind the effort. They are lobbying for a more traditional T intersection, which they say will maintain current traffic flow toward Gaston Avenue from Garland Road rather than increase it. LCRFT’s website encourages neighbors to write TxDOT and their local and statewide representatives in order to choose another option. A public vote is not part of the process, but the effort drew the attention of TxDOT and local leaders.

First, representatives of a group called the East Dallas Coalition of Neighborhoods showed up at a public meeting, distributing materials about how much traffic the design would push onto Gaston and through East Dallas. They offered an alternative design that had one right turn lane from Garland to Gaston, hoping to guide traffic toward I-30 rather than through their neighborhood.

Swiss Avenue neighbor Virginia McAlester helped organize the coalition and described their perspective. “Both Garland Road and East Grand are State Highway 78, and both have six lanes, medians and left-turn lanes. East Grand even has wide grassy medians and shoulders for additional safety. Gaston only has four lanes and it is a residential collector to serve local residents and businesses – not highway traffic, even though that is where most of it goes even today.”

Months later, red, white and blue yard signs appeared on

Gaston/Garland traffic pattern

 Advantages

“It has been a sham of a public process from the beginning,” Philip Kingston, City Council member of District 14, says of TxDOT’s path toward choosing the design. He and Mark Clayton, City Council member of District 9, say they are working toward finding a compromise.

Some traffic gaps on Garland Rd

Continuous route Arboretum Provides traffic gaps on Garland Rd.

By the City of Dallas’ own measures, Gaston is already over capacity. According to the city’s T horoughfare Plan, Gaston Avenue is designated as a “Community Collector,” which is supposed to max out at 14,000 vehicles per day but actually bears the weight of over 20,000 cars each day. Garland/Grand is considered a six-lane principal arterial, which is meant to hold 21,000 vehicles per day. For LCFRT, it doesn’t make sense to continue to overload Gaston with Option 2, whose path makes it easier to turn onto westbound Gaston and requires a left turn to stay on Grand from southbound Gaston.

Why Others Prefer The Reverse T

But representatives of TxDOT says that neither of the options will increase traffic. In an email, TxDOT’s public information officer Michelle Raglon wrote that the traffic assumptions underlying LCFRT’s main argument are incorrect. “Option 2 doesn’t push more traffic onto Gaston, because Gaston is not being widened,” Raglon wrote. “It only helps with reducing intersection delay.Since this project is not adding capacity, a significant change in the traffic pattern is not expected. The traffic analysis performed assumes that both options have the same traffic volumes.”

Other neighbors who have been involved from the beginning think the Option 2, or the Reverse T, is the right choice. John Botefuhr is an East Dallas neighbor, business owner and former president of the Friends of the Santa Fe Trail. He helped jumpstart the intersection redesign several years ago and has been involved in all the public meetings about the area.

As businesses arrive in the area and East Dallas becomes denser, he wants the intersection to be safer and more efficient for everyone, not just for those who live on Gaston. As a result, he favors the original Reverse T plan. He says the shorter crosswalks and reduction of commercial traffic attempting to use Garland-Grand to get to I-30 will have an impact on the safety of the intersection. “They mean well, but they aren’t looking at the entire area,” he says of the opponents to Option 2.

TxDOT representatives believe the Reverse T is the most efficient way to manage traffic at the intersection and say the project has evolved. “The tweaks that have been made have come from several sources.”

Another public hearing is planned sometime this fall. No date had been announced as this magazine went to press. Neighbors and elected officials may comment from a microphone and provide written feedback at that time, potentially leaving open the possibility of changes and continuing to leave the project in a state of limbo.

“Staff will make the best engineering decision on the project with the least amount of impacts on the community,” TxDOT representatives say. “Voting on road projects is not a part of the public involvement process.”

For more information:

Lakewood Citizens For Responsible Traffic: lcfrt.org

TxDOT: keepitmovingdallas.com

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DALLAS WOMAN’S FORUM AT THE ALEXANDER MANSION

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Oct. 26 @ 7 p.m. — Halloween Ball — $60 a ticket or 2 for $100

Oct. 31 @ 6 p.m. — Trunk or Treat — Free to the Public

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