Dallas, TX

Q&A: How Dallas Is Adding Parks By Going Small

Published

1 year ago

June 2, 2023

Q&A: How Dallas Is Adding Parks By Going Small

Klyde Warren Park has become the bellwether for urban park developments across the country, particularly as cities try to hide their highways under decks and caps. Deck parks are happening in Little Rock, Arkansas and Atlanta, Georgia. This type of development is happening closer to home, in McKinney. It’s even happening again closer to home, in Oak Cliff over Interstate 35E and near downtown and South Dallas over Interstate 30.

It’s a big infrastructure investment that attracts headlines and public dollars. Harder to fund—and harder to find—are the small decisions that lead to bigger changes. Like how Dallas jumped 10 other cities in a ranking of how many of its residents live within a 10-minute walk to a park.

These are smaller efforts targeted directly where people live, community investments where folks can walk their dog after work or throw a ball around with their kid on a Sunday. That energy is spreading across the city, particularly in southern Dallas and Oak Cliff.

“These don’t need to be 5-acre parcels,” says Arun Agarwal, president of the Dallas Park Board. “We see pocket parks in Manhattan. Why not here?”

The nonprofit Trust for Public Land is the entity that tracks how cities are providing greenspace for all their residents. This year, 73 percent of Dallasites now have a park within a 10-minute walk from their home. That’s up from 53 percent about a decade ago. At 43^rd, we’re now ranked two spaces below Austin, good enough for third in the state. (Plano, where 80 percent of its residents live within a 10-minute walk, is the highest in Texas at 16^th.)

Mayor Eric Johnson has made these small-scale investments a priority of his second term. His last state of the city address directed staff to put together a list of all the city-owned vacant properties to explore the potential for new parks or affordable housing. That list identified more than 300 parcels, the vast majority of which are below Interstate 30 in southern Dallas and Oak Cliff, neighborhoods that have long been overlooked for park infrastructure.

There are major projects underway in Oak Cliff. South Oak Cliff Renaissance Park replaced a 2-acre illegal dump across from South Oak Cliff High School in 2021. The Trust for Public Land’s Texas branch is overseeing the overhaul of the Five Mile Creek corridor, which will include two more parks and 14 miles of trail that will stretch east from the Westmoreland DART Station into the forthcoming 50-mile LOOP trailhead in the Trinity Forest.

Those are big projects. Mayor Johnson recently created a volunteer position he called the “greening czar.” He awarded it to the philanthropist and Container Store co-founder Garrett Boone, who has spent much of his retirement investing in green spaces across Dallas. (He’s one of the Trust for Public Land’s largest local funders.)

He’ll be charged with identifying other locations for parks that can help more residents live within a 10-minute walk from one. The mayor recently directed the city manager to use $1.25 million in federal COVID relief dollars to kick things off.

Boone chatted with D Magazine about his new (volunteer) job. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

The mayor has anointed you the city’s “greening czar.” Tell me about what you’re working on.

The groundwork for this whole project is a study by the Trust for Public Land, which was done before the last bond election (in 2017). They looked at every single piece of property in Dallas. And they looked at all the areas of Dallas that did not meet the gold standard for parks, which is a park within a 10-minute walking distance of every house. We’ve moved from 53 percent to 73 percent, which means about three quarters of Dallas lives within a 10-minute walk of a park.

The mayor wanted to make more progress on that based on a survey that he had done that identified city property that’s not being used. It’s sitting there vacant. He wanted to see if he could find property that can be turned into park because it’s nice not to have to go out and buy the land.

We want to do as much as possible and do something in every council member’s district. That’s really the way they keep everybody happy.

So how deep have you looked at the location of all these properties? There’s several hundred of them.

We just started. The Trust for Public Land has now overlaid all the vacant property on the data they already have. We’re beginning to make a list of people who have contacted me; they may have an urban farm or something that they think would be great for one of the properties. We’re just making list of contact information so we once we understand the layout in more detail about what’s available, then we can begin to match up projects that I’m going to start.

We’re going to think of categories of everything from a small pocket park, maybe one has a little performance pavilion where people can play or guitars or sing or perform. Maybe there’s a bird watching corner on a lot that has some trees, maybe a water feature—something that people could enjoy watching birds.

Mainly, we have to go through the normal project process, which is you’ve got to talk to the neighborhood and find out what they want. We’re not really going to be doing multimillion dollar parks at this point in time.

I think COVID showed everyone that we don’t necessarily need the big-dollar parks to make a difference in neighborhoods, that you need safe, accessible greenspace first.

A a good example is the Cool Schools program that (philanthropist) Lyda Hill helped finance. They install really cool play equipment in school playgrounds, but then it’s used by the whole neighborhood when school’s not in session. They get a park for the school, but also a park for the neighborhood. That’s not a million dollar expenditure.

We’re just beginning to say, hey, right now, the mayor had a good idea. And, you know, good ideas are great, but then you gotta figure out how to do them. Remember, Will Rogers once said, ‘nothing’s more common a good idea, and nothing is less common than a good idea carried out.’ I had the idea to start the Container Store, and some people said, ‘I had this idea 20 years ago!’ And that’s great. That means there’s a need to do it. But you didn’t do it. We did.

Let’s talk more about execution. You have the land, which is often the most difficult part. But you’ll still need the money. We have a bond coming up in 2024—do you envision using the data on park locations to inform how you’ll advocate for priority projects?

The recommendations come from the Parks Department. They’re the ones that make the presentations to the bond committee. So I can’t really answer that question. There are already existing needs out there, and we wouldn’t want to derail them. We’d like to get something, because we need something to start working.

But the greatest number of items on a bond program for Parks is everything from redoing rec centers, replacing roofs, replacing the bathrooms in the rec center, redoing a ball field, doing basic maintenance. They’re always looking to add parks in areas too; in looking through the bond funding in 2017, there was certainly money for opening new parks in council districts. So I’m sure there will be those, too.

We’ll work on these properties for now. Obviously, we’d like to make them synergistic (with the bond), but I can’t tell you whether we’re going to try to get some money for these or whether we’ll be in a position to. But hopefully.

So right now, you’re focusing on identifying where you’re going to have the highest impact through the partnership with the Trust for Public Land and their data. And then you’ll pursue funding?

Yeah. And identifying the ones that solve the problem of parks within a 10-minute walk of homes. That’s the underlying criteria. Right now we want to find a neighborhood that needs a park and the closest park is 20 minutes away. That’s unacceptable. What can we do in this area to mitigate that? The Parks Department has moved the needle in the last few years from 53 percent to 73. So it’s about what we can collectively do together to move that needle higher.

We’ve shown we can make progress. Now, we just want to make more progress.

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Matt Goodman is the online editorial director for D Magazine. He’s written about a surgeon who killed, a man who…

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Dallas, TX

Cowboys built largest home lead of season, held on for first AT&T Stadium win vs. Giants

Published

4 hours ago

November 29, 2024

Press Room

Cowboys built largest home lead of season, held on for first AT&T Stadium win vs. Giants

Thanksgiving traditions can come from anywhere. They can start at any time and feel as important the very first time as they do years later. For the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving, they sparked their second winning streak of the 2024 season by beating the New York Giants 27-20. In the spirit of the holiday season, the headline here doesn’t need to be that the Cowboys won both games against the Giants this year, now the clear worst team in the NFC East, by a combined 12 points. They are playing mostly watchable football for the first time in a long time, having some fun while doing so, and getting players back healthy to make a difference.

They finally have a home win to improve their AT&T Stadium record to 1-5 this season, with home games remaining against the Bengals, Buccaneers, and Commanders. It wouldn’t be a 2024 Cowboys home game without trailing early at some point, but unlike in so many other games this season the Cowboys were able to respond, get back to playing complementary football, and win the turnover battle and the game.

The Cowboys have now won two straight to snap a previous five-game losing streak and improved their record to 5-7. It is amazing how simply winning games in this league can turn narratives on their head, even when the wins and losses are determined by mere inches. Dallas has gone from a team destined to have one of the most pitiful lost seasons of all time to one tied in the win column with Indianapolis, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, and the L.A. Rams. The outlooks for all of these teams are much better than where the Cowboys appeared to be heading before finding their footing and winning two games in four days. This is a team that hasn’t showed signs of quitting despite staring many reasons for doing so in the face.

While these wins have dropped their draft position outside of the top ten, the Giants seventh straight loss keeps them in position for the number one overall pick. Certainly this adds the context to not get carried away with too much talk of the Cowboys making a miraculous run to the playoffs, but winning in the Thanksgiving throwback uniforms is always a welcome sight. This was the fourth time the Cowboys and Giants have met on Turkey Day, with the Cowboys now 4-0 and securing a sweep of their rivals from New Jersey for the fourth straight season and seventh in the last eight.

Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images

With a longer break now before the Cowboys look to add to their two-game win streak and start a home one against the Bengals, here is how the team served up dessert to go with every fan’s Thanksgiving feast on Thursday afternoon.

It was once again a makeshift offensive line for the Cowboys as Zack Martin missed his second straight game. In what should have been a good evaluation game for Tyler Guyton, it was mostly Chuma Edoga at left tackle after Guyton got hurt, alongside Tyler Smith who did return after missing the Commanders game.

The Cowboys were able to mitigate this again by getting the ball out of Cooper Rush’s hands, as well as relying on Rico Dowdle to serve as his own blocker when needed and run through defenders for positive yards. Of Rush’s 21 completions, only two were completed longer than ten yards. The Cowboys were just 3-12 on third downs, with two of these conversions coming on the game’s opening drive. Jumping out to a touchdown lead against a Giants team starting journeyman Drew Lock at QB would have been ideal, but another red zone third-down attempt didn’t give the Cowboys much of a chance at finding paydirt.

With Brandin Cooks playing in his first game since the week four win at the Giants, also played on a Thursday night, the Cowboys looked to get him involved early out wide. This allowed CeeDee Lamb to get more opportunities out of the slot which is where Mike McCarthy can scheme the run-after-the-catch plays needed for this Cowboys offense to find any explosiveness. With Cooks on the outside and Lamb inside on a third and five, Cooks could not win at the catch point on a drive route and brought up a fourth down that led to Brandon Aubrey’s first of two field goals.

Cooks and Lamb playing on the same side of the formation was a heavy focus for the Cowboys in this game, looking to find any way to get their receivers more free releases and create easy throws underneath for Rush. This entire concept is still a work in progress for this offense though. The second-down play before the incompletion in the red zone was a slot fade to Kavontae Turpin. We mentioned last week how Turpin should have a real chance to get more involved with the offense for the rest of this season, but a low percentage throw like this one is not a good way to do so.

In his first game back from injury, Cooks continued to have some of the same struggles from earlier in the year when it came to keeping defenders away from the catch point and separating vertically on routes. Returning for just his third home game of the season after only playing in early season runaway games against the Saints and Ravens, it was a great sight for tired turkey-feasting eyes to see Cooks score on a crossing route in the third quarter to extend the Dallas lead to ten. This pushed the lead to double-digits which went a long way with Lock and the Giants offense struggling to sustain drives and handle a Cowboys pass rush that again had their way whenever given the chance to play from ahead.

If the playoffs are still going to be a distant objective for this Cowboys team, and evaluating the existing talent on the roster is still the primary objective over these next five weeks, it is important not to lose sight of players with high draft pedigree or “blue chip” prospects in this evaluation. In this case, it was again defensive tackle Mazi Smith having a strong game on the defensive interior.

Mike Zimmer’s defense has looked like the most consistently prepared unit on this entire football team for weeks now. Led by a pass rush that’s been lifted by Micah Parsons, and expects DeMarcus Lawrence back as early as next Monday night versus the Bengals, the Cowboys never let Lock get comfortable in the pocket in this game. He had some scramble plays that extended drives, but Lock was mostly contained where the Cowboys got to him for six sacks. Lock’s 28 yard rush in the first quarter was the Giants’ longest offensive play of the game.

The Giants’ first possession going for a touchdown was their only TD drive until late in the fourth quarter, and they got there by converting both a fourth-and-short and third-and-short. The Cowboys did a great job making later third-down attempts for the Giants more obvious passing situations where they could bring pressure and force the ball short of the sticks, while committing coverage to star rookie receiver Malik Nabers and force other targets to beat them. Jourdan Lewis and others did a good job disrupting Nabers and not allowing him to run free downfield. Lewis’ consistently strong play this season, particularly in recent weeks, has helped safety Donovan Wilson look better in coverage by having more time to get to his spots in coverage and not have to carry receivers at their stem in man.

Both starting cornerbacks Bland and Butler were up to the challenge, while DeMarvion Overshown also got in on the action in coverage with one of the defensive plays of the season for Dallas. Overshown has been a blur all season making plays all over the field, especially in his first Thanksgiving action against the Giants. He is one of the team’s best young rising players to build around at linebacker, and plays like his tipped screen pass for a pick six to give the Cowboys their first lead show why.

When Overshown crossed the goal line to put the Cowboys ahead 13-7, the narrow six-point lead was actually the team’s largest of the season at home. Even playing with a marginal lead is all the Cowboys needed to settle into this game and play to their strengths. The Cowboys offense left a lot to be desired in their efforts to separate on the scoreboard and make it a true Thanksgiving feast, having a CeeDee Lamb third-down drop that led to Hunter Luepke being stopped short on fourth down in the second quarter. The defense more than picked up the slack, forcing back-to-back punts after Overshown’s pick-six with a Donovan Wilson third-down sack and three-and-out around their own turnover on downs.

On the Wilson sack, Parsons also had pressure twisting from the defensive end spot to rush against the Giants interior offensive line. Increasing these chances for Parsons to rush against guards is something Zimmer should be able to do more of when Lawrence returns to play at left defensive end if the play of the defensive tackle group remains strong led by Smith, Linval Joseph, and Osa Odighizuwa, who added a sack as well.

The Giants’ first drive lasting 13 plays for a touchdown was longer than their next four drives combined, ending in an interception, two punts, and a field goal. This is simply not a Zimmer and Al Harris led defense that is going to let opposing offenses get comfortable and control the game while putting up points that increase the pressure on Rush to get in shootouts. The Cowboys were able to get Rico Dowdle over 20 touches for the second week in a row, and the results showed up in the most important place – the win column.

Just how far the Cowboys can take this style of play the rest of the season remains to be seen, but being good enough over their last two games to reach 3-1 in division play is something every Dallas fan can smile about.

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Dallas, TX

Game Day Guide: Stars vs Avalanche | Dallas Stars

Published

11 hours ago

November 29, 2024

Press Room

Game Day Guide: Stars vs Avalanche | Dallas Stars

First Shift 🏒

As the Stars pass the quarter point in the 2024-25 season, they definitely have some challenges.

After posting back-to-back trips to the Western Conference Final under coach Pete DeBoer and his staff, the start of this year has been uneven. Dallas last season had the best road record in the NHL and the best in franchise history at 26-10-5. This year, Dallas is 5-6-0 away from home and also has an additional “home” loss in Finland. That’s something that has to be addressed.

But, conversely, they are much better at home, going 8-1-0 at American Airlines Center, adding to the realization that this is a completely different season.

So when you compare the two performances, there is a lot to be addressed. Dallas was second best in points percentage last season at .689 and is eighth best this year at .619. The Stars last season were third in scoring at 3.59 goals per game and are eighth this year at 3.38 goals per game. That said, they are still eighth in both categories.

But it doesn’t feel that way.

“This team I don’t think has had a ton of adversity these last two years, and there’s a little bit coming at us right now,” said Duchene after a 6-2 loss in Chicago on Wednesday. “We’ve just got to figure things out and keep working and pushing.”

The Stars’ biggest issue so far has been a lack of power play success. Dallas is 25^th in success rate on the man advantage at 16.7 percent after ranking sixth last year at 24.2 percent. They also have surrendered three shorthanded goals after allowing only four all of last season.

“We have to find the balance,” said Johnston. “You can’t panic, you have to stay focused. You just have to outwork the penalty killers. You have five guys, but you still have to work harder than their four.”

The Stars will get the chance to do that with some great tests coming up. Dallas plays host to Colorado on Friday and Winnipeg on Sunday. The Avalanche are starting to get healthy and are 7-2-0 in their past nine games. Winnipeg is leading the NHL at 18-5-0. After winning the Central Division last season, Dallas currently ranks third.

That said, this is a strange season. Because the league will shut down for the Four Nations Faceoff in February, and because the Stars took a week to go to Finland, the schedule is condensed. As a result, the players and coaches have to adjust. Even so, many good teams have had challenges this year too, and that’s part of the game.

“You look around the league and we’re not the only team going through something like this,” DeBoer said. “You have to dig in and stick together and get your foundation back and play better hockey.”

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Dallas, TX

New York Giants Fall to Dallas Cowboys, 27-20 on Thanksgiving

Published

19 hours ago

November 28, 2024

Press Room

New York Giants Fall to Dallas Cowboys, 27-20 on Thanksgiving

The New York Giants’ dreadful 2024 season continued with a 27-20 to the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving. It was the Giants’ seventh-straight loss this season and their eighth-consecutive defeat at the hands of the Cowboys, dating back to the 2020 season.

The Cowboys benefitted from two Giants turnovers, including a pick-6 by DeMarvion Overshown in the second quarter he returned 23 yards to give the Cowboys a 13-7 lead, the Cowboys at that point never relinquishing the lead.

The other came following a Giants fumble in the second half, which the Cowboys converted into another touchdown to cap a six-play scoring drive.

The game started well, as the Giants held the Cowboys to just a field goal after their first possession. The Giants offense took the field with Drew Lock under center for the injured Tommy DeVito.

Lock was under pressure practically half the game, the Cowboys hitting him 14 times and sacking him six. The Giants also had just as many penalties in this game (13) as they did first downs (17), and their defense once again couldn’t stop the run if they tried, with missed tackles–at least 10 of them in the first half alone–an ongoing problem.

Cowboys running back Rico Dowdle captured his first career 100+ yard rushing game, going for 112 yards and one touchdown against the Giants, who saw three defensive linemen–D.J. Davidson (shoulder), Rakeem Nunez-Roches (stinger) and Dexter Lawrence II (elbow)–leave the game with injuries.

Cowboys quarterback Cooper Rush finished 21 of 36 for 195 yards and one touchdown, his leading receiver being tight end Luke Schoonmaker (five catches on six pass targets).

Lock and running back Tyrone Tracy, Jr. scored the Giants’ two touchdowns, TRacy’s coming on a 1-yard run on the Giants’ opening drive to give them their first lead in a game since Week 6, and then Lock scoring a fourth-quarter garbage time touchdown on an 8-yard rush to make it 27-20 with 2:18 left.

The Giants got the rest of their scoring from kicker Graham Gano, who hit field goals of 46 and 47 yards.

Giants receiver Malik Nabers caught 13 pass targets for 69 yards, but he also dropped two balls. Rookie tight end Theo Johnson displayed toughness on a few of his receptions, hauling in five catches for 54 yards.

This is the Giants’ ninth time in the last 11 seasons that they’ve lost at least ten games. This loss eliminated them from playoff contention and currently slots them into the No.1 pick in April’s draft.

The Giants will have 10 days to prepare for their next matchup, a home meeting with the New Orleans Saints. They’re now the only team in the NFL to win a game at home still not this season, and they currently have the league’s longest losing streak.