New park gives Westchase families reason to cheer

A school bus screeches to a halt outside the Westchase Grand Apartments, and dozens of kids bounce out with energy to burn. The heat has finally broken, so the apartment pool is out. What about a park?

Today, that would mean loading up the car and heading at least 3 miles down a highway into the teeth of rush hour.

Soon, however, a 3.4-acre city park will sprout a quarter-mile away, on Wilcrest across a gully from the Westchase Library. That effort is thanks to City Council's vote Wednesday to buy two plots in west Houston for parkland. The $3.6 million needed to buy the Wilcrest site - and a 1.8-acre tract on nearby Woodchase - comes not from the strained city budget, but from a dedicated park fund that has become Houston's only reliable source of funding for new parkland. Every dollar helps, given that Houston ranks 78th out of 100 major cities in the Trust for Public Land's 2016 ParkScore index of park accessibility.

Waving to get his niece's attention as she hopped off the bus, apartment resident Adrian Brooks cheered the park purchase, saying, "That's what's up!"

"They need to. There's not much else around here," Brooks said. "My nieces, I don't want them always cooped up in the house. They don't have no playground equipment. It's electronics, laptops and phones and all that."

Before fellow apartment resident Themis Aguilar could finish saying, "I would really love that," daughter Aimee jumped in: "Yay! It would be nice. We always have to drive. Now we can walk."

The 6-year-old said she prefers swings and has a new bike to try out. Older brother Jonathan, 8, trying to get a word in, said he most likes playground features.

Dedicated fund

The money to buy the Wilcrest and Woodchase sites comes from dollars generated under a 2007 ordinance that divided Houston into 21 sectors and levied $700-per-unit fees on residential developers who did not set aside green space. The fees generated within each sector must be spent there within three years and can be used only for park improvements.

With zero dollars slated for parkland acquisition in the city's five-year capital plan and bond dollars focused on the Bayou Greenways 2020 effort to create linear parks along Houston's waterways, the open space fund is Houston's best bet to expand greenspace, save the occasional philanthropic windfall.

The recession initially undercut the idea, limiting city parks director Joe Turner largely to replacing playground equipment.

Since late 2012, however, the funds have accumulated enough in some sectors to fund roughly $9.8 million worth of land purchases, covering more than 10.7 acres.

Much of this has occurred in the busiest park sector, the western portion of the Inner Loop between Interstate 10 and U.S. 59.

Many other sectors have not even generated enough to replace one set of playground equipment, however, and the tracts that have been acquired have not yet been developed.

To avoid being misleading, Turner said his staff refer to these purchases as green space, not parks. Turner also recognizes that the parks master plan that council approved last year envisions hundreds of acres of parkland being added in each sector, when in fact he will be lucky to finish the current decade having reach ed a similar figure citywide.

"Right now we're trying to acquire land. It's a long-term project," he said, noting the master plan looks forward 25 years and does not aspire to put a park at every intersection even if fully implemented. "But if you don't start planning, you'll never get there."

With a new city bond issue planned in November 2017, Turner said he hopes to direct some of those dollars into land acquisition in more stagnant sectors, largely on the east side.

Possible vote next year

In discussing how to add more green space, Mayor Sylvester Turner also referenced the coming bond issue, and an accompanying vote on whether to repeal a rule that limits what Houston can collect in property taxes.

"We need more parks. It's a part of building 'complete communities,' " the mayor said, emphasizing a phrase he has increasingly referenced in recent months. "It's difficult to acquire more parkland without the resources. We'll see what happens next year, around November 2017. We'll take a look at what may be on the ballot then."

Barring any snafus in the closing process, the west Houston parks approved Wednesday will be handed over to the Westchase District - a local board funded by taxes levied on area businesses - to be developed, maintained and operated.

2-year-time frame

Westchase general manager Jim Murphy, also a state representative for west Houston, said he expects the facilities to be finished within two years.

"We're going to provide wonderful public parks, none of which have ever been provided in this part of Houston, and they're going to be a tremendous amenity both for the district and the neighborhood around it," Murphy said. "The lack of park space out here is well known, but it's pretty hard to address in that land is expensive, and we'll probably spend more on development than the city is spending on acquisition."

In choosing new sites, Turner's staff uses a system developed by the Trust for Public Land that assesses the need for green space based on population density and other indicators, such as the number of youths and low-income residents in an area.

The parks master plan uses that approach, which aims to provide a park within a half-mile or 10-minute walk of every resident.

The same approach was used to identify 30 Houston-area schools to receive new SPARK parks — dual-purpose public parks and playgrounds — in the next three years, driven by last month's announcement of a $5 million gift from the Houston Endowment and the Kinder Foundation.

Those 30 new park spaces also will come cheaply for the city, as Houston is chipping in just $450,000 in federal grant dollars. One such item — $150,000 in federal dollars for a SPARK park at Alief ISD's Bush Elementary — received council approval on Wednesday.