Q&A With Dan Biederman Of Fair Park, Dallas
Dan Biederman is one of the country’s most prominent urban planners and developers and the President of Biederman Redevelopment Ventures Corporation, which plans, revitalizes, manages, and programs parks, public spaces, and neighborhood streetscapes in 28 states and six countries. BRV is overseeing the conception, design, and programming for a 14-acre Community Park being built inside Fair Park in Dallas.
Q: What are the revitalization plans for Fair Park.
A: Fair Park is a 277-acre National Historic Landmark and public park nestled a mile outside of downtown Dallas. Built-in 1886 to accommodate the annual State Fair of Texas, the site has undergone many transformations. Most notably, Fair Park was the site of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition and the 1937 World’s Fair. These events transformed the campus from an early twentieth-century fairground to a 1930’s Art Deco work of art. Hundreds of buildings, installations, and pieces of art were added to the campus. Today, 60% of these additions remain and the campus is considered the largest collection of art Deco art and architecture in the world.
Since the 1930's the site has continued to be primarily a site for large events and the annual 24-day State Fair of Texas. The campus has also ebbed and flowed with various cultural tenants and museums. These limited uses have created an underutilized and undervalued public space.
Over the last forty years, the topic of what to do with Fair Park has been a perpetual issue for the City of Dallas. Finally, in 2019, a new public-private partnership took over with the goal of reactivating and revitalizing this historic gem. Partnering with Fair Park First, the non-profit manager of Fair Park, and Spectra, the venue operator, Biederman Redevelopment Ventures created a 20-year Master Plan Update for the transformation of Fair Park into one of the premier parks in the nation and a daily destination for the surrounding neighborhoods. This multi-faceted, multi-year effort will convert hardscape into green space, open the Park to neighboring communities, bring the park to life with high-quality year-round activities, and restore and repurpose the Park’s historic structures for public use and cultural programming.
The broad strokes of the Master Plan Update include:
Converting 20-acres of parking lots into usable green space.
Adding multimodal trails that connect the site internally and externally with the surrounding neighborhoods.
Adding over 1,000 new trees to increase biodiversity and provide much-needed tree canopy and shade to combat the heat island effect on the site and in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Enhancing the site’s resiliency with comprehensive stormwater management, a persistent problem on the site, and creating more naturalized spaces.
Adding a hotel with surface-level retail and restaurants.
Enhancing the guest experience with new programming, building uses, bilingual wayfinding, and signage network, lighting, dedicated park attendants, a visitor center, increased food and beverage opportunities, and free Wi-Fi, among others.
Prioritizing maintenance, preservation, and restoration of the remaining historic structures and art.
Preserving the historic legacy of the site and preparing the site for the 2036 Texas Bicentennial, among other major events. The inaugural project to kick off this transformation is the Community Park, which is the conversion of a 14-acre surface parking lot into a verdant and highly programmed park within the park—slated to open in spring of 2024.
Q: What drew you to this project?
A: Fair Park is a historic gem, ripe with potential. Today the site operates as an event park but could be so much more than that. Fair Park struggles to be just a park—a space for recreation and leisure on an everyday basis, year-round, especially for the communities that surround Fair Park, At Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, no matter the size of the space, daily uses are essential. Walking around, there are endless programming opportunities across the 277-acres.
Fair Park is a National Historic Landmark on par with the Alamo but has nowhere near the same reverence, admiration, or visitorship. Fair Park has a vast collection of public art but very little signage and no maps or tours. Fair Park has over twelve resident institutions but no joint programs, public Wi-fi, or any progression of experiences that extend dwell time. Fair Park has five public theaters/amphitheaters with no regular performances or resident theater groups. Fair Park can be more than a site for major events. By stitching the campus together with daily uses and new greenspaces, the Fair Park calendar and campus can be a multi-dimensional experience for Dallasites, North Texans, and visitors alike.
Q: What can you tell us about the Community Park?
A: The Community Park is the first step to putting the park back in Fair Park. The site of the Community Park currently is the site’s largest parking lot. It was historically a thriving Black community that was seized via eminent domain in the 1960’s and repurposed into massive parking lots to accommodate the growing State Fair ofTexas—creating a massive barrier between the campus and community.
One of the main goals behind this new park is to give back to the surrounding community and restitch the neighborhood by building a state-of-the-art space that is curated by the community—from design to programming to amenities. The 14-acre park will be designed to be the front porch of the surrounding community by providing accessible nature and usable outdoor recreation spaces with year-round, daily programming. The Community Park will feature acres of play structures for all ages and abilities, multiple food and beverage offerings, a performance pavilion, naturalized and interactive water features, a dog park, flex lawns, and swaths ofNorth Texas ecological elements, to name a few.
Studio-MLA out of Los Angeles has been selected as the park designer. Studio-MLA is a design studio with more than 25 years of experience integrating landscape architecture, urban design, and planning to create places that inspire human connection, unite communities, and restore environmental balance. Studio-MLA, in partnership with renowned Dallas landscape architects Studio Outside, internationally award-winning architect Allison Grace Williams, FAIA, and acclaimed Dallas-based architects and historical narrative storytellers buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, make up the core design team. The design of the Community Park is underway with a final design to be announced at the end of 2021.
Q: Why build a Community Park within Fair Park?
A: Fair Park is very grey. The entire campus is surrounded by a grey moat of parking lots and the campus is made up of 75% impervious surfaces. This creates a lot of issues—stormwater management, site resiliency, increased heat island, and an uninviting, bleak public realm. By transforming a 14-acre parking lot, the Community Park will be the first step into turning grey into green onsite. The Community Park will remove one of the grey divides that separate Fair Park from the neighboring communities—an overall goal of the Master Plan. It will also remove a fence line that creates another barrier to access but still allow for larger events to occur on other portions of the campus.
The location of the Community Park was chosen based on urban planning principles informed by thorough engagement of surrounding neighborhoods and responses from a comprehensive community outreach. The location is significant for multiple reasons. It is not within the boundaries of the 1936 Centennial Exposition site that gives Fair Park its designation as a National Historic Landmark. It is therefore not subject to the regulations that protect the historical integrity of Fair Park and allows for more freedom of expression. There is important and complex history at this site, history that goes beyond a simple parking lot. In comparatively recent times, it was part of the surrounding neighborhood, covered with the homes of friends and relatives. This painful story is shared with many of the parking lots that surround Fair Park.
Lastly, it is also on a side of the campus that has been considered the backside since it is the largest massing of parking lots. This project will emphasize the premise that Fair Park has no front or rear and can be inviting and accessible from all sides.
Ultimately, the Community Park will be a first step in righting a wrong. It will provide accessible park space year-round, even during major events, and create a contiguous, welcoming campus for the community.
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing Fair Park and the Community Park?
A: The topic of putting the park back in Fair Park is longstanding and has created a lot of fatigue around the topic of revitalizing Fair Park. The campus has seen numerous failures. There have been malfeasances that have led to an underutilized and undervalued public park. This has led to a perception of safety, racial, and economic stigmas, and a cycle of neglect in South Dallas. Fair Park is seeking to live up to its name and become a fair park by turning the page on a sordid history and starting fresh with a Community Park that puts community first.
The Community Park won’t be open until the spring of2024 and parks are needed now more than ever. Across the globe, we have seen the need for parks double in 2020. In Dallas alone, visitation rose from 30 percent to 75 percent during just the month of March 2020. The global pandemic exposed the many inequities for the working class and people of color in today’s society, including unequal access to parks and greenspaces. Between now and 2024, Biederman Redevelopment Ventures will be continuing to program and enhance the amenities and offerings of the campus outside of the Community Park, The goal will be to combat the decades of fatigue, build awareness, perfect the park programming, create daily usability, and develop relationships with the surrounding community.
Q: What do you think the impact of the Community Park will be for Dallas?
A: No matter our differences, parks are where we go to connect with nature and each other. A successful park becomes an extension of home, a safe place, and a daily amenity that puts its neighbors first whether it be in programming, horticulture, marketing, or design. Welldesignedparks can contribute to sustainable urban development by improving health and wellness, facilitating connections with nature, fostering social interaction and inclusion, and enhancing connectivity across the urban landscape.
The Community Park is a step towards reawakening this sleeping giant in South Dallas. The Community Park’s primary focus is to create and nurture a positive impact on the residents of South Dallas. lts design and programming will be curated by surrounding residents, so it remains relevant and rooted to South Dallas. It will be an inclusive, equitable, and accessible space for the neighborhoods that surround Fair Park. It will be a space for recreation, respite, engagement, and leisure with programming and amenities focused directly on the health and wellbeing ofDallasites. Parks can spur change—connect communities, create a sense of belonging, improve public health, provide safety, drive tourism, grow the local economy, and protect a city’s most important natural places. The goal of this Community Park is to be just that—a park for the community.
Dallas got its first experience with a programmed public space when Klyde Warren Park opened in 2012—another BRV project. It quickly became the most actively programmed park in the Southwest and a major destination for people throughout the Metroplex. Klyde Warren Park is touted as being “not only successful in fixing an urban fracture,” but also in fostering “a sense of place and community, with lasting positive rippling effects.” As widely adored as Klyde Warren Park has been, Fair Park’s untapped potential for green space, programming, placemaking, and community engagement will make it the archetype for public spaces in North Texas.
The scale of the Community Park project goes well beyond the 14-acres. A green investment internally has an external impact that will ripple out into the community and be a first step toward catalytic change and revitalization in South Dallas.
Q: What happens next for Fair Park?
A: The Master Plan Update is broken out into four phases for implementation. The Community Park is only the first project out of Phase One. In tandem with the Community Park, the next four years of the campus will see the addition of a parking deck, a new hotel and mixed-use development, a smaller gateway park, connection to an external multimodal trail, and new onsite tenants for various buildings. Restoration and preservation of the hundreds of public art and the forty historic structures are ongoing. In addition, the new management is working on expanding and diversifying its event portfolio. To see all of the phase one projects, visit https://fairparkfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/202 1/04/Master-Plan-Phase-One-Map.pdf or check out the full master plan here https://fairparkfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2020-Fair-Park-Master-Plan-Update.pdf