Trees don’t grow tall overnight. When the Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP) unveiled its community-driven vision to expand Houston’s 160-acre Buffalo Bayou Park, the challenge was delivering green space that was connective, resilient, and inclusive.
The underutilized and hard-to-access 2.3-mile-long swath of park space along the bayou first opened in 2015; it brought green space closer to the Fifth Ward, but that was just the beginning. Under an expansion scheme, all in due time, Tony Marron Park will be expanded and updated, pedestrian bridges will span over the creek, and neighborhood projects will take hold.
This week the BBP hosted a meeting about the 10-year Buffalo Bayou East master plan to give the community a progress report. The nonprofit has been working with Michael van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) and others on the vision. At the meeting, new renderings were unveiled that detail some of the programmatic additions coming to the park. There, the public was able to see their own ideas incorporated into the design proposal, a result of social media surveys conducted in both English and Spanish.
“We felt we were at a really good point, where we have things completed and under construction,” Anne Olson, president of BBP, told the Houston Chronicle. “This is the first time we felt that people could actually see that the things people have (suggested) at these meetings has been incorporated into various projects.”
“The overarching theme would be connectivity,” she added. “These neighborhoods, they’ve been cut off from the bayou for generations. Much of this property was at one-time industrial.”
One by one the projects, part of the master plan, are completing. Next month, Japhet Creek Park will open to the public in the Fifth Ward. Japhet Creek Bridge, a trail connecting to Tony Marron Park will make its debut in September 2027; and a second trail, Gregg St. Bridge, will connect Fifth Ward to Greater East End in December 2027.
Latest visuals show Tony Marron Park brimming with new recreational opportunities. An expansive green lawn will make an ideal spot for playing catch or catching-up with friends and a playscape shaped like an armadillo beckons imaginative play. Other forthcoming activations include a pavilion atop a rocky berm. The structure is depicted in renderings as being formed by blocky concrete walls and a trellis of pipes. It will be outfitted with fountains and sprinklers for cooling down on a hot afternoon.
Just beyond Buffalo Bayou Park’s lawns, work is also underway to transform former industrial structures into cultural and community hubs. Work is already underway on Turkey Bend, a warehouse slated to become an open air pavilion for hosting a variety of events, following a renovation by NADAAA. Part of the industrial relic will house Houston Public Library’s Hispanic History Center and Archives. Out-of-commission gravel silos will be integrated into the park and have already been used as art installations. A housing development with 80 units opened this summer.
Realizing the full vision for an expanded Buffalo Bayou Park comes at a hefty cost, $310 million to be exact. In 2022, a generous $100 million donation from the Kinder Foundation put a big dent in that price tag. The BBP anticipates project completion in 2032.
