Plans for a new playscape at Brackenridge Park could include reusing the trees that are slated for removal during the first phase of the park’s restoration, said city and Brackenridge Conservancy officials.
The new children’s play area will be built around the existing trees within the area, said Rob Gray, lead architect of Kansas City-based Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects.
“We want to be respectful of the trees, we want them to be a part of the design,” Gray said Wednesday. “We’ve never worked on a site that has this much history,” he added with a chuckle, “We want to tell the land’s stories through the design.”
The new playscape, which is entering into its design phase, will be located in a bend within the San Antonio River across from Joske’s Pavilion just west of the Witte Museum and south of Lambert Beach Softball Field.
Gray told the San Antonio Report that they could include utilizing the removed trees’ stumps as hopping steps, their timber as logs in a small cabin-like build, or their wood as part of a playground.
The removal of trees from Brackenridge Park has been hotly contested ever since plans for the voter-approved 2017 Brackenridge Park bond project first came before the Historic and Design Review Commission in early 2022.
Two public meetings were held Wednesday afternoon to gain community input on the new playscape, the first project that’s been launched as a part of the 2024 Brackenridge Park Reconciliation Plan. The reconciliation plan came about through a series of public meetings, the formation of a revamped advisory committee and the creation of a new capital improvements evaluation tool, all of which were approved by the city and city council earlier this year.
Under the finalized plan for phase one of the park, which will focus on the restoration of Lambert Beach, 48 trees are slated for removal from the park including six heritage trees. The project had originally planned to chop down 105 trees.
The new playscape would ideally reinvigorate outdoor play for children and families within the park, said Chris Maitre, Brackenridge Park Conservancy’s new CEO.
The new playscape will also fill a void that’s been at the park since 2020. The existing playground by Joske’s Pavilion, built in the 1920s and updated in the 1990s, has been closed for almost four years, first due to the pandemic and then due to an excessive amount of bird feces on the equipment, Parks and Recreation told the Report in an email Thursday.
The new playscape, which will be across the river from the old one, will be under a design phase through May. Gray added the firm hopes to have concept designs complete by the end of December to bring before the public for additional input.
Construction is expected to begin in the summer, with plans for completion and opening by October 2026, he added.
“We want this to be a place where people can come together,” Gray said of the project. “We want to see intergenerational play, we want to create a place that invites everybody to participate.”
