2018 Collaborative Achievement Award: Klyde Warren Park

About once a month, Jim Burnett, founder and president of OJB Landscape Architecture, leads prospective clients on tours of Klyde Warren Park, in downtown Dallas. Burnett’s firm designed the 5-acre park, which was built over the sunken eight-lane Woodall Rodgers Freeway, and which transformed a concrete eyesore into a highly popular (and highly programmed) urban oasis, reconnecting the city’s Arts District and Uptown neighborhoods in the process. The project, which opened in 2012, has been so successful that civic leaders from around the country are trying to replicate some of its magic. “They say, ‘We want our own version of Klyde Warren Park,’ ” Burnett says. “It’s gotten to the point where if you’re going to build a new highway through a city, you have to include a deck park.”

Klyde Warren, funded through a public-private partnership and managed by the nonprofit Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, is one of the winners of the 2018 Collaborative Achievement Award. The park includes a children’s play area, a concert pavilion, a dog park, a botanical garden, a restaurant, and a designated food-truck section. On Saturday mornings, urban dwellers flock there for yoga classes on the park’s great lawn.

“No matter when you come to the park, there’s something going on,” says Kourtny Garrett, president and CEO of Downtown Dallas. (A downtown resident herself, Garrett likes to dine with friends on the restaurant patio while her 6-year-old twins play within eyeshot on the grass.) With more than 1 million visitors a year, she adds, the park has been a catalyst for commercial and residential development downtown.

The secret to Klyde Warren Park’s success, Burnett believes, “is that it’s not a one-liner. It’s not just one big ‘insta-moment.’ It’s a whole series of outdoor rooms and program ideas. It’s an active park where everybody feels welcome. Everyone has a reason to go.”

Other 2018 AIA Honor Awards: