Downtown News

Downtown Dallas deck park gets more acres and a shnazzy visitor center

Klyde Warren Park will get bigger and more visitor-friendly if that is even possible.

Photo by Thomas McConnell

Downtown Dallas' deck park Klyde Warren Park is getting an update that will expand its size and add a visitors' center.

According to a release, 1.2 acres will be added over Woodall Rodgers Freeway, just west of St. Paul Street, to be used for a 20,000-square-foot pavilion that will house a state-of-the-art VisitDallas Experience Center.

This visitor center will be unlike any other in the U.S., fusing "best in class" customer service with interactive technology that tells the Dallas story.

The expansion will include additional green spaces and public gathering spots and allow the privately-operated park to offer more programs, adding to the 1,300-plus free programs and events it already provides annually.

The estimated $76 million project is from a partnership between the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation (WRPF) and VisitDallas, to complete the original vision of Klyde Warren Park. Design and construction will begin in 2019, with completion anticipated as early as 2022.

"This project fulfills the vision we outlined when we began talking about decking over Woodall Rodgers a decade ago, and it is the next step in improving the connectivity of the Park and the Arts District with the West End, Victory Park, and the Perot Museum," says Jody Grant, chairman of the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation. "The VisitDallas Experience Center will add to the allure of downtown, and the pavilion will be a multi-use facility that allows the Park to offer an indoor venue for special event rentals and point of purchase opportunities."

The VisitDallas Experience Center will serve as "concierge" to the city, offering a place to pick up a jersey or VIP tickets to sports team events or last-minute deals on theater seats.

The space will transform seasonally to showcase annual events from the Byron Nelson to the State Fair to one-off events like the Women's Final Four.

The 5.2-acre, $110 million Klyde Warren Park opened in October 2012 and since then has welcomed over six million visitors, created more than $2 billion in economic development, and increased property value in the area around the Park.

According to Eric Rothman, president of HR&A Advisors, the consulting firm tasked with analyzing the economic impact of the Park's completion, this new phase of development will provide another $850 million in stimulus.

Kit Sawers, president of Klyde Warren Park, says that the special events they can now host will provide a new revenue stream for the Park that ensures its financial health.

"Great urban parks have multi-use buildings associated with them, and this pavilion and center will put our park in that category," Sawers says.

Klyde Warren Park is currently a 5.2-acre deck park bridging Uptown and downtown Dallas. The park is privately funded and operated by the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation and relies on private donations, sponsorships, rentals, and funds raised by its annual Park & Palate event to pay for its nearly $5 million annual operating budget.

That budget allows for the upkeep of the Park and sustains the free daily programming enjoyed by 100,000 Dallas residents each month. The VisitDallas Experience Center will create a critical new revenue stream for the Park.

TALL TALES

Missing giraffe turns into Texas Hill Country's tallest mystery

Real Country Animal Rescue/ Facebook

Where can Gracie be?

A giraffe named Gracie is missing in Texas, and the search for her has become a tall order.

Gracie, who is about 3 years old, has been missing for nearly two weeks after escaping her enclosure at Cedar Hollow Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, said Vic Jones, who owns the remote property about 100 miles west of San Antonio. He said Wednesday, June 24 that Gracie had wandered into a part of the privately owned preserve that other giraffes previously avoided.

Jones said he has sent up helicopters to look for Gracie, a few sightings have trickled in, and a $5,000 reward is on the table.

But the giraffe, which stands roughly the height of a tree, hasn't turned up.

“She wound up going up and feeding in an area on the hillside and the rocky ledges that none of the other giraffes had ever gone on before,” Jones said. “And when she came down off of there, she came down on the wrong side of the gate.”

The ranch is in rural Real County, where its roughly 2,700 residents were put on alert to be on the lookout for a missing giraffe. Jones said the search area is extremely remote, and the likelihood of Gracie encountering any humans is low.

“People are not in danger of her because she’s not around people,” Jones said. 'She’s out in very, very rough, heavily wooded lands."

The Texas Hill Country has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the country. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the mild climate and rugged terrain seems to serve as a good stand-in for most of the animals' native African environments.

He rattled off a list of animals that have gone missing over the years, especially after floods, but said this was his first giraffe.

“I’ve had wildebeests, I've had water buffalo, I've had monkeys, I’ve had zebras, all go missing,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we recover them, and sometimes we don’t.”

While the middle of Texas is not a giraffe's native environment, Jones said Gracie should be able to find plenty of leaves and other vegetation to eat. He said other animals were not likely to bother her.

Jones said he initially had helicopters searching an area of about 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with no luck. A few days later, there was a report that Gracie was spotted to the south.

But by the time they could search the area, Jones said, she was already gone.

“We're always two three days late for where the information is coming from, so that makes it tough,” Jones said.

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