The Dallas Morning News: Dallas, let’s get serious about the Southern Gateway Park

Will city treat the southern half like it has the north?

Dallas has always been the sort of city that can put its money where its mouth is.

Our philanthropic community has a well-deserved reputation of ensuring that big, deserving projects get the private funding they need to succeed.

And we are also able to summon the public and political will to make sure the right thing happens — from the embrace of DART’s rail system, to the redesign of Central Expressway, to the construction of the Arts District and Klyde Warren Park. The list could go on.

It’s time for us to rally again in support of a transformative project that can reconnect a severed and neglected part of our city in a way that offers a measure of economic and social justice and that helps build up the crucial southern half of Dallas.

We are talking about the Southern Gateway Park — sometimes known as Dallas’ second deck park. If you’ve taken a ride recently south of downtown along Interstate 35E, you’ve seen a lot of construction in the area of the Dallas Zoo.

Construction is ongoing for about half of the deck that will span the freeway between Marsalis and Ewing avenues. The ultimate plan is for a 5-acre park that will reconnect the east and west sides of the city that the interstate cut in two.

But here’s our concern. While there are signals of support for the park, we have yet to see the kind of coalescing political, philanthropic and public commitment this park needs to be fully realized for what it is: a real chance to sensitively change the future and fortunes of this part of our city.

We don’t yet have a full commitment of public funds for the construction of the entire deck that’s needed. Nor is there a philanthropic commitment to ensuring that the park above the deck is constructed to its full potential.

There is a kind of loop that projects of this scale get trapped in. Everyone wants someone else to put the money up first. And let’s be clear, a certain level of doubt is sown here because this is a southern Dallas project.

That needs to stop. On the good news front, former Mayors Mike Rawlings and Ron Kirk, along with north Oak Cliff developer Amanda Moreno Lake, have signed on as co-chairs of the Southern Gateway Alliance. We are confident that they, along with the park’s board chair Michael Gruber, can raise substantial private funds and ensure that important commitments are forthcoming.

But this is a crucial moment for the park. Now is the time for the park to secure an additional $60 million in public transportation funds to complete the deck infrastructure and unlock greater private support.

That requires a public and political commitment to this project at a level we just aren’t seeing.

Dallas should be ready to demonstrate that it is willing to do for southern Dallas what it has done for Uptown and downtown. Our whole city will be better for it.