A crowd of 100 gathered under the beaming sun Wednesday to celebrate the opening of the first 44 acres of the 204-acre Classen-Steubing Ranch Park on San Antonio’s far North Side, a highly developed area of San Antonio with scarce green space.
While the entire park is not completed, the opening of the first phase includes a baseball field, two softball fields, two soccer fields, both a small and a large pavilion, picnic tables, restrooms, walking trails, trees and parking.
“As you can see, I can barely contain my excitement for a number of reasons,” said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who donned a Tim Duncan jersey to celebrate the Spurs having won the NBA lottery Tuesday night, giving them the right to make the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.
“Two-hundred acres of parkland, that’s huge,” Nirenberg said of the park near Stone Oak. “Considering this is one of the fastest-growing, densely populated areas of our state.”
One acre of the park is fenced off for construction, destined to be the long-awaited pirate-themed playground Mitchell’s Landing, named after 3-year-old Mitchell Chang who drowned at a local swim school in 2018.
The accessible and inclusive play area’s opening has been delayed until later in 2023 after permit issues and inclement weather once again pushed back its opening, Mitchell Chang Foundation director April Chang said. Equipment for the playground is expected to arrive in June, and the park development should be finished this fall.
While Nirenberg and other city officials spoke, park visitors in sportswear strolled the trails and visited the sports fields.
The park sits on what was formerly the largest piece of undeveloped land in Stone Oak and the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone near Hardy Oak Boulevard.
Intended for passive use like picnics or reading a book, according to most of the park remains in its natural state. About 160 acres of the park are under an easement for aquifer recharge purposes. The city’s 2017 bond program partly funded the development of the 44 acres that opened to the public this week.
“For those of you who have enjoyed the Phil Hardberger Park over these last several years, this is the same kind of experience that you will now get to see in the north central area of our city,” Nirenberg said.
Voters also approved another $5 million for phase two development of the park in the 2022 bond, which will explore the idea of adding miles of walking trails to connect the new park to Stone Oak Park, said Homer Garcia, director of the city’s parks and recreation department.
Community meetings for input on phase two will begin in the fall, Garcia said.
“The reason this project is really critical is because it presents an opportunity to add to an area where we don’t have a lot of green space,” Garcia said. “That connects the community to the space in two ways: Through education, preservation, and conservation, and then through active space opportunities.”
