[Sic'EmBears]

$90 million proposal puts a parking garage in Klyde Warren Park. Wait. What?
Robert Wilonsky
August 16, 2016

On Thursday, Jody Grant, the chair of the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park Foundation, will go to City Hall to debut the latest iteration of the Klyde Warren, which includes a new deck topped by a parking garage covered with a bar and restaurant, elevated walkways stretching east toward the Arts District and west toward the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, a cantilevered deck hanging over the freeway and the long-promised fountain along Pearl Street, among other significant additions and alterations.

You read that right. A parking garage would be built on a new deck between St. Paul and Akard streets, with room for 70 to 90 spaces. That garage — known as Sky Park — would house the park's offices. There would also be a restaurant and bar with an open-air deck, and it would go directly in front of oilman Ray Hunt's headquarters.

Sky Park will have a sibling: Sky Deck, hanging off Akard over the freeway. Grant calls it an event space.

Grant said Sky Park would be the centerpiece of the whole project — the one thing that could actually generate revenue for operations and maintenance and pay down debt service. In fact, Grant said, "Without the garage we would abandon the whole project."

Because that do-over won't be cheap. Grant, who put his own millions into the original deck park and helped make something out of literally nothing, said the additions will cost around $90 million, just $20 million less than the deck park's original price tag. He said the foundation will raise $50 million of that, while the city's being asked to cover the remaining $40 million in bond dollars.

"If this works, I am committed to working on it and making it happen," Grant said. "If it doesn't I will pass it to someone else."
Either way, the park will still be there.

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