New Dallas Greening Czar Tasked With Adding Parks

Choosing from hundreds of possible park sites all around Dallas is the task before the new Dallas Greening Czar appointed by Mayor Eric Johnson Tuesday.

Environmentalist and retired Container Store executive Garrett Boone will serve in the role of making new parks a reality from the list of 350 parcels of publicly owned land.

“I think I have the experience to achieve meaningful results, but I’m also reminded of the admonition of Kermit the Frog, that being green is not easy,” Boone said.

Johnson named Boone for the task at an event beside a city-owned parcel along Walnut Creek in the Walnut Creek Estates neighborhood of Far Northeast Dallas. The neighborhood has no parks.

Neighbor Bryan Wallace first pointed the site out to the mayor as a potential park in a message last year when Wallace heard that Johnson asked the city manager to make the list of publicly owned locations.

“I know personally I would use it almost every day,” Wallace said.

Johnson said more than a quarter of Dallas residents do not live within a 10-minute walk of a park.

“Creating new green spaces out of land the city already owns can improve the lives of countless children and families across Dallas and I’m excited about the launch off this effort today,” Johnson said. “Dallas City limits are Garrett’s only boundaries. All 386 square miles of this city are fair game.”

Walnut Creek Estates is an established neighborhood with older homes and many residents who have lived there for years.

Several of them watched the mayor’s event and voiced worries about the park plan afterward.

“There could be benefits. There could be some very, very difficult issues that come out of it,” resident Ed Charles said.

He and his wife, Doris, said they have lived in the neighborhood for 40 years.

“I am concerned about it because of the traffic. It’s a very quiet neighborhood. This part of the neighborhood is very quiet and I am very concerned that it wouldn’t be so,” Doris Charles said.

She recalled how neighborhood kids once put a basketball goal in the cul-de-sac where the mayor’s event was held Tuesday.

“It drew people that were not very considerate of the neighborhood, so I’m afraid that would happen also,” she said.

Dallas Parks Director John Jenkins said the neighbors should not worry.

“If the City of Dallas takes on this as a park, which we envision that we will, we will work with the community and this park will be well maintained and the community will be proud of it,” Jenkins said.

The guy who invited the mayor to pay attention to the site said he is excited about the plan and believes his neighbors will be, too.

“Once they see a plan, I’m sure we could convince them. This isn’t a park for everybody. This is a park for our neighborhood,” Wallace said.

Boone said Dallas has 700 miles of creeks like the one adjacent to Walnut Creek Estates.

“Each one of those creeks represents a very special habitat and if those creeks are paid attention to, you get neighborhoods to adopt those creeks, clean them up through invasive species management, it’s a huge habitat that probably rivals the Trinity River corridor, so I look forward to doing that,” Boone said.

The new Dallas Greening Czar said he will also focus on reducing litter in Dallas and work with nonprofit groups including the Trust for Public Land.

Boone said neighborhood youth may be recruited to help maintain the new neighborhood parks to help boost community pride.