Park news

New I-35 deck park in southern Dallas moves closer to spring 2026 debut

Renderings for Halperin Park.

Courtesy rendering

A massive deck park spanning Interstate 35E in southern Dallas is set to open in late spring 2026. Called Halperin Park, the five-acre community space has been under construction since 2017 and will be completed in two phases:

Phase One (finishing in late spring) will include the section from Ewing Avenue to Lancaster Avenue and will feature a pavilion, amphitheater, playground area, interactive fountains, a second level overlooking the Dallas Zoo and the highway, and a large event room for every dining and special events.

Phase Two (to be completed over the next five years) will add the park section toward Marsalis Avenue, with an additional pavilion and extra gathering space.

The project is being developed by the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation and built by the Texas Department of Transportation. Funding comes from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, as well as the private Halperin Foundation, which donated $23 million in 2024 and secured naming rights.

In January, the Dallas City Council approved spending up to $8 million to complete Phase One for spring completion.

The public-private initiative will create $1 billion in economy impact over the next five years, according to a study by UNT Dallas.

Rendering of Halperin ParkCourtesy rendering

A park with purpose
Developers say the park aims to integrate the west side of Oak Cliff, which was somewhat segregated with the construction of I-35 in Oak Cliff in the 1960s, leading to low-income communities and generational poverty.

The project started nine years ago, when the Texas Department of transportation planned a reconstruction of I-35 and began gathering neighbors’ feedback. The result was a plan to widen bicycle and pedestrian lanes in the service roads alongside the highway, and to build a deck over the highway between Ewing and Marsalis avenues, adjacent to the Dallas Zoo. (Similar Klyde Warren Park's "deck park" concept.)

While the project faced some skepticism at first, it later gained momentum as private supporters continued to join.

“Forty percent of the Dallas population lives in South Dallas, yet this segment only accounts for 15 percent of the tax base,” says April Allen, President and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, citing the opportunity to address the economic equality in the area through the development of the park and all the business it can bring.

Rendering of Halperin Park.Courtesy rendering

Neighborhood pride
For Allen, this project is personal. The Toronto-born executive first moved to Dallas 22 years ago to work at Neiman Marcus, after getting her engineering degree in Canada and her MBA at Harvard. Oak Cliff felt like the right place for her as an intown neighborhood, with a confluency of cultures, local pride and an entrepreneurial spirit, as she describes it. Her first Realtor told her Oak Cliff was “not the right place for her." Instead of choosing a different neighborhood, Allen chose a new Realtor.

She has lived on the same street in North Cliff since, now raising her two kids with her husband, an Oak Cliff native, whom she credits for her further understanding of the neighborhood, its roots and civic dynamics.

Under Allen’s leadership, Halperin Park is focused on a community-first approach that provides support to the neighbors through programs around health and wellness, after-school activities, local food trucks and markets, and educational workshops to help expand homeownership and financial acumen.

To highlight the history and culture of Oak Cliff, they will feature an annual Walk of Fame, lifting up the stories of those who contributed to Oak Cliff history, with the first one happening as part of the inauguration of the park, organizers say.

They will provide their own 24-hour security team to ensure a safe place for families and kids, with clean and well-lit crosswalks.

Given their proximity with the zoo, parking will be available on the East side of the park at the zoo site, with a walkway to the park. They are working on parking options for the West side.

“We want to create a space for community growth and more business in the area," says Allen. "We are already seeing this come to life with projects such as East Dock, and we are excited for future investment that the park will bring."

parks

cattle concerns

Flesh-eating screwworm fly detected in Texas for first time since 1966

Photo courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife

This little fly can do a lot of damage

The New World screwworm fly has reached south Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed June 3, the first time in decades that the parasite with flesh-eating larvae has threatened the nation's cattle industry and only the third time it's appeared in the U.S. in that time.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the case was in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, about 50 miles from the Mexico border. Texas State Veterinarian Bud Dinges said he has established a 12-mile quarantine zone, prohibiting the movement of any warm-blooded animal — including pets — outside that zone without an inspection.

Rollins said there have been no other detections of the fly in the U.S., and officials were quick to say that while the fly’s larvae are a threat to livestock production, they don’t infest food. Properly treated, even the infested calf should recover, Rollins said.

Rollins, U.S. and Texas agriculture officials, and cattle industry leaders have been sounding public alarms about the fly’s movement across Mexico for more than a year, spurred on by memories of it causing tens of millions of dollars of losses — potentially billions in today’s dollars — before its eradication in the 1970s.

It is the first case confirmed in Texas since 1966, Rollins said.

The months of effort to keep the fly out of the U.S. have included dropping millions of sterile screwworm flies in the area to mate with wild females — the same method used successfully before the fly was eradicated. Rollins said the USDA is confident enough in its preparations that it believes “there is no threat of mass infestation.”

“There is no reason to believe this incursion will result in establishment of the pest in our country," Rollins said.

The announcement of the suspected case comes only a day after Rollins had an online news conference to highlight the nearness of the threat, with cases being confirmed in Mexico as close as 25 miles from the border — and to outline the USDA's efforts to combat it.

The New World Screwworm fly is a tropical species that decades ago infested cattle in warm weather across the southern United States, but it was contained in Panama until late in 2024.

The female fly lays its eggs in open wounds or mucous membranes and they hatch into larvae that eat flesh — making them unlike most fly species — and can infest livestock, wild mammals, household pets and even humans. Infestations can lead to death if left untreated.

In August 2025, federal health officials confirmed a case in a Maryland resident who had traveled to El Salvador, but the victim recovered and officials found no transmission of the parasite. Before that, the last outbreak was in the Florida Keys in September 2016, mostly among wild deer, and it was contained early the next year without spreading further.

The female flies mate once in their monthslong lives, and if they do so with a sterile fly, their eggs would not hatch — and the population would die out over time. Past eradication efforts were so successful that the U.S. shut down facilities for breeding sterile flies, leaving only one in Panama for decades.

That is changing. The USDA dedicated $21 million to convert a fruit-fly breeding facility in southern Mexico into one for breeding screwworm flies, opened a new center for dispersing sterile flies bred elsewhere in southern Texas and has started construction on a $750 million screwworm fly factory there. The breeding facility in Mexico should be operating next month, Rollins said.

Officials also deployed 8,000 fly traps along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Rollins said the USDA has tested more than 58,000 fly samples, along with 19,000 wild animals.

Rollins also closed the U.S.-Mexico border last year to livestock imports from Mexico, a decision she defended during her news conference Tuesday. The fly also can travel with people and their pets and with wild animals, officials noted, but Rollins stressed Wednesday evening that it doesn't fly great distances on its own.

Dinges said ranchers and pet owners need to understand that it's important to respect the quarantine zone.

“Please help us prevent any further movement of this pest by staying put,” he said.

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