City Acquires the Property through Parks and Open Space Ordinance
The journey to build our neighborhood park began at the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016 when the City of Houston purchased the property through the Park and Open Space Ordinance. According to HCAD.org, the property on Wagner was purchased effective 9/22/2015 and the properties on Honsinger were purchased effective dates 2/22/2016 & 2/29/2016. The site itself is ~ .56 acres.
This article in the Houston Chronicle provides more information about the land slated for the park.
Improvements in the Greenspace
Since the city purchased the property the following improvements have been completed:
- The houses on Honsinger were leveled in August 5, 2016. If your interested you can watch a clip of the house demo below.
- The neighborhood currently uses the Wagner space as an ad-hoc dog-park/ kiddie play space.
- 311 has been out to assess taking down the old fence separating the Wagner and Honsinger properties and it is slated to be removed in March 2017.
While this is awesome progress there are still a few things we hindering basic usability.
- The Honsinger side of the property is littered with trash and broken glass from the demo and does not have much grass coverage. Additionally dying trees and old rebar are at the back of the property
- On the Wagner side, the ground is not level and dog poop is left on the ground. It is not so fun when your toddler steps in runs up to dog poop and yells "poo poo"!
- The land could use some trashcans, benches and picnic tables to make it more usable to the community immediately for low cost.
There is still much to be done and the Houston Parks and Recreations Department (HPARD) has said they will work on improving these basic needs in the near future.
Meeting with the Houston Parks and Recreation Department - February 2, 2017
On February 2, 2017 a small group of neighbors met with the HPARD the learnings and results of the meeting were:
- Property was acquired through the Park and Open Space Ordinance
- HPARD can take care of our initial "must have" list (e.g. clean up land, add benches, add trashcans, add picnic table, remove the fence, etc). The timeline on when this will be completed is still TBD.
- The process to fundraise and develop a full park (e.g. playground, garden, etc) can take 5-10 years and $500-$1 million dollars.
- We can work as a community to begin fundraising and work towards developing a park.
"Parks are Forever" - Joe Turner
