Your first look at the master plan for a 'memorial park' between Deep Ellum and Fair Park - Dallas, TX
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WalksfarTX
N 32° 47.069 W 096° 46.391
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Dallas Park and Recreation Board is looking into a possible solution to the decades-old question mark that is Exposition Plaza, the circular tiny park at Canton Street and Exposition Avenue designed by architect James Pratt for the Texas sesquicental
Waymark Code: WMXZ0M
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/19/2018
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Dallas News
Four years after the Dallas City Council agreed to spend $35,000 in 2006 bond funds on a master plan for the 1-acre patch of green space nearly surrounded by concrete, architect and urban planner Kevin Sloan debuted his vision for Memorial Park at Exposition Plaza.
If the board OK's the project - and if they can find the money for a makeover, either through private donations or bond funds - Memorial Park would become a place where the city would plant "a rotunda of trees" surrounded by memory walls, commemorative plaques and monument benches honoring individuals and events that would have gone otherwise ignored, Sloan said.
Memorials could involve a city bigwig or a national tragedy. The park board would have to come up with new memorial guidelines, since its plaque policy doesn't cover something like this.
As Sloan pointed out, there are memorials scattered across the city, from the Dallas Police Memorial (which Sloan worked on, along with Ed Baum and John Maruszczak) outside Dallas City Hall to Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Fair Park, not to mention the statues and plaques planted in various city parks.
The space currently "suggests it's a memorial plaza to begin with," Sloan said.
But not everyone on the park board is convinced a memorial park is the best use for what was intended to be a gateway park from downtown Dallas and Deep Ellum to Fair Park.
Park board vice president Jesse Moreno said he's "not convinced taking the entire green space is the right direction."
Board member Larry Jones worried about turning a park into something resembling a cemetery and questioned putting a memorial park in a place "that's incredibly unfriendly to pedestrian use."
Board member Paul Sims said the city needs "more places for people to play" in the city center, and suggested remaking the acre and turning it over to nearby residents who'd like to use it for, say, a pick-up game of soccer. He also worried that filling that small block with so many big trees would turn it into "a haven for the homeless or, worse, illicit activity."
Then again, said board member Sean Johnson, having something like this -- something you might find in, say, Washington, D.C. -- "complements our park system well."
But for the near future, it's going to remain nothing more than a proposal, which you can read below.
Exposition Plaza Master Plan Briefing 1.7.2016