The Trust for Public Land in Action: 2019 C E L E B R AT I N G W HAT YO U M A D E P O S S I B L E IN TEXAS AND BEYOND
Thank you! As we reflect on the past year, we offer our sincere thanks for your sustained support of The Trust for Public Land. From connecting the hills of Southern Dallas with new parks and trails to protecting important barrier island ecosystems on the Texas Gulf Coast, our work would not be possible without the generosity of donors and volunteers—thank you!
Travis, Bastrop, and Caldwell counties now have a data-driven plan for using parks as a public health strategy. The San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge is 693 acres larger—and better able to protect Houston and the Gulf Coast from the next major hurricane. Your philanthropic support helped advance all these initiatives, leading to happier, healthier, more connected communities across Texas. Your investment is transforming individual lives and whole communities, and this report is a celebration of what we accomplished together with you in 2019. More than ever before, Texas is focused on the things that truly matter: health, walkability, culture, equity—in a word, resilience. Close-to-home, high-quality parks, trails, and greenspaces are a crucial component of this vision, and we are proud to play a role in this new chapter of our state’s story. Through collaborative spirits and cooperation with nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and civic leaders, we will transform Texas. Thank you for being an important partner on this journey.
Throughout 2019 we continued to create parks and protect land for the benefit and enjoyment of all Texans. Our trio of GIS-based decision support tools in Houston, Dallas, and Austin are helping these cities reimagine how parks and greenspaces can be woven into their urban fabric as resilience strategies for the 21st century.
Thanks to your support, the residents of South Oak Cliff and Highland Hills in Dallas will soon have beautiful, vibrant, and safe places to enjoy outdoor experiences with family and friends.
JESSE BERMENSOLO
This fall, we advocated for a constitutional amendment to permanently dedicate funding for conservation across the state. We cast a vision for a network of parks and trails across the Five Mile Creek watershed in Dallas that will provide unparalleled access to some of the city’s most beautiful and iconic landscapes. We permanently protected over 800 acres of land statewide, including 40 acres in Dallas—the largest addition to the city’s park system in a generation.
alice branch creek pop-up park Dallas, TX
Derrick Battie COMMUNITY LIAISON, SOUTH OAK CLIFF HIGH SCHOOL
After six years playing professionally with the Seattle SuperSonics and Boston Celtics, Derrick retired from the NBA after a career-ending knee injury. He returned to SOC to help students achieve their academic and athletic goals. At the festival, Derrick told the gathered leaders, “For too many years, Oak Cliff has been a park desert, a food desert. It’s been gerrymandered and gentrified, and everyone’s come in and taken their piece. But all this time, SOC has stood strong. This school is our community, and this community is our school.” Indeed, a transformation is underway at SOC. After years of struggling academic performance, the school is meeting or exceeding state accountability standards. The Golden Bears Football Team celebrated an 11-1 season in 2018. And the 60-year-old campus is undergoing a $52 million renovation, bringing it into the 21st century. But Derrick has bigger plans in mind for his alma mater; he is leading the school’s partnership with The Trust for Public Land to transform Alice Branch Creek into a health-and-wellness greenbelt. Today’s festival, attended by over 350 residents, is the first step toward realizing that dream. In the week leading up to the event, volunteers and partners from the Texas Trees Foundation and
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On a sunny Saturday in June, Derrick Battie is holding court under a giant pecan tree at the South Oak Cliff Community Parks Festival. Standing 6’10” tall, the retired NBA player and South Oak Cliff High School (SOC) alumnus has a magnetic personality and quick smile that serves him well as Community Liaison for the high school. Today, he is moderating a lively discussion with a Dallas City Council member, two Park Board representatives, and the high school’s principal, football coach, and band director about the creek that runs across the school’s campus.
derrick battie Dallas, TX
Groundwork Dallas descended upon a vacant, overgrown lot adjacent to the creek and the high school, cutting back the tall grass and clearing the litter. And with assistance from The Better Block Foundation, we created a one-day pop-up park, with a playground, amphitheater, picnic garden, and barbecue. Looking over at the creek, he describes the potential he sees for the future greenbelt. “We’re going to have a place for kids to play, the biology class to learn, our student-athletes to practice, and their parents to exercise. That’s the format: get everyone out to enjoy the park. This park is about creating a culture of healthy living here.” Once complete, the one-mile-long greenbelt will connect the high school to a nearby hike-bike trail, public health clinic, residential neighborhoods, and Glendale Park. Standing in the pop-up park and listening to the SOC Golden Bears Marching Band play the school’s fight song, Derrick couldn’t have been prouder. “The SOC alumni have been fighting for decades for something like this, and The Trust for Public Land has given us a voice and a mechanism to realize it. This park is a win-win for everybody.”
Connecting southern Dallas with parks and trails In February 2019, the Dallas Park and Recreation Board voted unanimously to adopt our Five Mile Creek Urban Greenbelt Master Plan, a community-oriented vision for a network of parks and trails created in collaboration with landscape architecture firm TBG Partners and hundreds of Southern Dallas residents. The master plan lays the groundwork for 23 miles of new trails and over 500 acres of parks and natural areas across the Five Mile Creek watershed. Once implemented, over 56,000 people will live within a 10-minute walk of the greenbelt network, including 22,000 community members who previously lacked closeto-home park access. Implementation of this vision has already begun at Judge Charles Rose, Sr. Park and Alice Branch Creek.
create a community-directed design for the new health-and-wellness greenbelt that will follow the banks of Alice Branch Creek. In June, we temporarily converted a 1.8-acre vacant lot— which we later purchased—into a pop-up park to inspire neighbors to get involved in their future park. The vacant lot will be transformed into an anchor park for the greenbelt in 2020. Thanks to our collaboration with the community and local organizations, we know this greenbelt will be a cherished community asset for years to come.
THANK YOU Your generosity has allowed us to begin implementation of the Five Mile Creek Greenbelt at a rapid pace, and we are proud to share that we have secured over $6.3 million of our $10 million goal. Please continue to advocate for and support this meaningful investment for thousands of residents and students who will enjoy close-to-home park access.
J U D G E C H A R L E S R O S E , S R . PA R K Leveraging $3.7 million in private and public funding, we purchased a 40-acre tract in Highland Hills and conveyed it to the city for use as a new public park. This public-private partnership inspired an additional public commitment of $1 million from the Texas Legislature in memory of Judge Charles Rose, Sr., who served the Highland Hills neighborhood for years as a justice of the peace.
A L I C E B R A N C H C R E E K H E A LT H A N D - W E L L N E S S G R E E N B E LT The one-mile long Alice Branch of Five Mile Creek winds through the heart of South Oak Cliff. Throughout 2019 we worked with neighbors to
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We are now working to secure match funding to begin design and development of the park in 2020. When the park opens in 2022, it will provide closeto-home park access to 3,500 residents and nearly 4,000 students at nearby Paul Quinn College and the University of North Texas at Dallas.
Once we meet our goal, we will break ground on Alice Branch Creek Health-and-Wellness Greenbelt and Judge Charles Rose, Sr. Park in 2020 and 2021, respectively, with grand opening celebrations for these new greenspaces to follow.
five mile creek Dallas, TX
Protecting Texas’ most important natural places S A N B E R N A R D N AT I O N A L WILDLIFE REFUGE Located on the Gulf Coast in the “Central Flyway,” the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge provides a haven for millions of migratory birds—and nearby Houston residents looking for recreational opportunities. Since 1999, The Trust for Public Land has protected more than 7,600 acres of this refuge, including 693 acres added in July 2019. Leveraging federal funds with private philanthropic support, we protected a 3.5-mile stretch of shoreline. SINK CREEK The leaders of San Marcos, one of the fastestgrowing cities in America, are taking proactive steps to protect access to the extensive network of creeks and watersheds that crisscross their city. Popular with swimmers and hikers alike, these creeks provide unique recreational opportunities and also protect the city’s drinking water. Since 2003, we’ve helped San Marcos create over 1,200 acres of parks and greenbelts along its waterways. In 2019, the city received a $423,500 US Forest Service Community Forest grant. The funding will be used to collaborate with The Trust for Public Land to add 102 acres to the city’s Sink Creek natural area. TPL STAFF
Day on the hill 2019 Washington, DC
L A N D A N D W AT E R C O N S E R V AT I O N F U N D In March, our Federal Affairs team celebrated a major victory with the permanent re-authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF is one of the biggest sources of federal funding for parks and open spaces, providing $16.8 billion for parks since 1964. We’ve used LWCF funding to support our work across the country, including Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. After authorization of the program lapsed in 2018, we formed a coalition of 1,400 allied conservation organizations to secure permanent and full funding for the program once and for all. Our volunteer leaders played an essential role in the success of this effort: in recent years hundreds of advisory board members and staff have traveled to Washington, D.C., to advocate for LWCF as part of our annual Day on the Hill event. Our North Texas Advisory Board’s advocacy was critical to securing support for this legislation. In 2019, our board members met with six offices from the Texas Congressional Delegation. Thanks to this collaborative effort, LWCF has been reinstated with no expiration date!
Healthy parks plan for Travis, Bastrop, and Caldwell Counties In June, we launched Healthy Parks for Travis, Bastrop, and Caldwell Counties, our latest geo-mapping decision support tool. A collaboration between The Trust for Public Land and the St. David’s Foundation, this GIS-based planning tool establishes a framework for incorporating parks into community health strategies across the tri-county area in Central Texas. Through community workshops, focus groups, surveys, and park bench chats, over 2,000 residents were involved in the plan’s development, exemplifying The Trust for Public Land’s unique approach to community engagement. The plan’s GIS analysis incorporates dozens of datasets and considers five focus areas: socioeconomic vulnerability, level of park need, flooding and water quality, heat islands and
poor air quality, and community health. Project partners Asakura Robinson and TBG Partners used our GIS analysis and community feedback to create Healthy Parks Toolkits to inform the planning and design of parks that promote physical, mental, and environmental health. Inspired by a growing body of research linking health and well-being with access to nature, St. David’s Foundation’s collaboration on the Healthy Parks Plan represents a bold step forward toward making Central Texas “the healthiest community in the world.” Not content with merely creating a plan, the St. David’s Foundation is now offering grants to local nonprofits and public entities serving the tri-county area (ranging from $20,000 to $200,000) to catalyze implementation of the plan’s key recommendations.
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North Texas Advisory Board We are so grateful for our volunteer leaders! Sharon Lyle, Chair Chris Applequist Tillie Borchers Lucy Burns Trammell S. Crow Lois G Finkelman Jerry Frank Ron Gafford
Michael Horne Dan Jeakins David Marquis Heidi Pandya Tamela Thornton Bob Wright Karl Zavitkovsky
MEET THE TEXAS TEAM
• Carrie Smizik, Institutional Giving Manager
• Robert Kent, Texas State Director
• Octavius Foster, Community Engagement & Coordination Intern
• Devin Girod, Director of Philanthropy • Molly Plummer, Parks for People Program Manager
• Michael Patrick, Senior Land Protection Project Manager • Stacey Shankle, Senior Project Manager
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Alice Branch Creek Hike Dallas, TX
Our work is made possible thanks to the generosity of individuals like you. Our most pressing needs are for: • Five Mile Creek ($650,000 needed) • Alice Branch Creek Park & Health-and-Wellness Trail ($1.1 million needed) • Judge Charles Rose, Sr. Park ($2 million needed) • Green Schoolyards ($130,000 needed)
Thank you!
JIM OLIVE
Thank you
for supporting our land-for-people mission in Texas and beyond. We couldn’t do it without you.
BY THE NUMBERS • 67 land protection projects were completed in 25 different states, including 4 in Texas.* • 84,918 acres were permanently protected for generations to come, with 305 acres in Texas.* • Over the last five years, the percentage of Dallas residents with close-to-home park access has increased from 54 to 69 percent, bringing a park within a 10-minute walk of over 940,000 residents.
• Over 350 neighbors attended the South Oak Cliff Community Parks Festival, celebrating the power of parks to improve the environment and community health. • In May 2019, nearly 80 Trust for Public Land volunteer leaders and staff representing 16 states attended our annual Day on the Hill event to meet with elected officials and advocate for continued federal funding that supports our land-for-people mission. * fiscal year 2019 (July 1, 2018–June 30, 2019)
Join us. The Trust for Public Land creates parks and protects land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come.
tpl.org
Robert Kent Texas State Director 214.957.5527 | robert.kent@tpl.org Devin Girod Director of Philanthropy 214.449.6555 | devin.girod@tpl.org 325 North Saint Paul Street, Suite 2210 Dallas, TX 75201
COVER: TOP LEFT, TPL STAFF; TOP RIGHT, RICHARD FREEDA; MIDDLE LEFT, TPL STAFF; MIDDLE RIGHT, KELLY FORTENER; BOTTOM, CHRISTOPHER T. MARTIN.