A community group recently broke ground on a project that will transform a former church parking lot into a 1-acre neighborhood park. With construction set to be completed in the fall, the group is already looking for similar projects in other parts of town.
“A value of ours is that people need nature,” said Taylor Bates, deputy director of the Sunset Ridge Collective. “They need to be able to have spaces for rest and connection in beauty.”
Meanwhile, a Westside pocket park called Poet’s Pointe opened to celebrate visual art, sculpture and prose.
These unconventional approaches to adding green space in San Antonio could further improve local residents’ access to parks at a time when the city still ranks in the lower half of the top 100 U.S. cities for parks, according to a 2023 report by the Trust for Public Land.
The annual report assesses park systems across the 100 most populated U.S. cities and ranks the cities based on a ParkScore, which factors in five characteristics: access, investment, acreage, amenities and equity. To see the full report, click here.
San Antonio’s park system ranked 57th out of 100, just above Newark, New Jersey, after moving up two places from its position last year. San Antonio has been advancing in the rankings since 2018, when it ranked 67th.
Among Texas cities in the top 50, Plano maintained a high ranking again this year, coming in 16th, followed by Austin at 41st and Dallas at 43rd. Ten Texas cities ranked in the bottom 50, including San Antonio and Houston.
Park access and distribution
More low-income households and people in neighborhoods of color in San Antonio live within walking distance of a park, the report found.
But like last year, San Antonio scored below average in equity, or fairness of distribution of parks among all neighborhoods.
Low-income neighborhoods have 24% more park space than those in high-income neighborhoods, and while neighborhoods of color have access to 10% more park space per person than the city’s average neighborhood, they still have 10% less park space than predominantly white neighborhoods.
Private recreational amenities such as parks in gated communities and private golf courses are not included in the ParkScore.
Only 51% of people in San Antonio live within a 10-minute walk of a park, the report said, while 53% of people of color do. The average number is still down from 52% last year. In 2020, that number was just 43%.
What’s improved? The city scored above average for amenities such as adult and senior centers, community centers and permanent restrooms. It also scored high in acreage park size and percentage of land dedicated to parks for its residents.
Park inventory expands
On average, San Antonio spends $116 per resident on park investment and allocates 32,001 acres, or 10.1% of the city, to parkland.
Last month, residents on San Antonio’s far North Side saw the opening of the first 44 acres of the 204-acre Classen-Steubing Ranch Park, which features sports fields and walking trails. About 160 acres of the park are under an easement because they sit over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. The city’s 2017 bond program partly funded the development of the 44 acres in phase one.
Another major park under development is the 5-acre Civic Park in Hemisfair downtown. It is scheduled for completion this year and will include more than 100 new trees, water features and a promenade along with a spacious lawn for public events.
Next year, two parks are scheduled to open: the Berkley V. and Vincent M. Dawson Park on the East Side and the Village Row park on the Northeast Side, said Connie Swan, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department spokeswoman.
The city’s 2022-2027 bond program will allocate $272 million to 82 park projects, including improvements to existing parks and construction of new ones.
As San Antonio makes progress in some areas of town, new green spaces continue to open across the city.
This week, construction began on Charis Park, which will be located on the site of a 1-acre parking lot just outside Alamo Heights in the Sunset Ridge neighborhood. The parking lot belonging to Sunset Ridge Church was a social hotspot for families. Now it will be transformed into a sustainable green space.
The idea for Charis Park came from wanting to convert unused church property space into something to help the community, said Bates. Her group, the Sunset Ridge Collective, is a nonprofit that will lead community initiatives.
“A big mission of the park is to create a space for community but also to be good stewards of the earth,” Bates said. “Sustainability and creation care is a big piece of it, converting a parking lot — a bunch of asphalt that used to be a heat island — into a beautiful green space that can help absorb heat instead of producing heat.”
Bates said the Sunset Ridge Collective is open to partnering with organizations in other parts of the city.
“[In] certain neighborhoods, people don’t have that kind of access to green space,” she said.
On the West Side, the City of San Antonio opened Poet’s Pointe last week, featuring ceramic murals and poems by local artists. The 1,600-square-foot “pocket park” is not an official city park but a public art project, said Christoph Michaud, marketing manager for the city’s Arts and Culture Department.
Although the city continues to add park space, there are opportunities for more.
A map on the ParkServe website shows areas in San Antonio where the need for more parks is greatest because statistics show people in those areas have poor mental health, are physically inactive and have a high number of low-income households. Those spots are scattered throughout the city.
San Antonio Parks and Recreation Director Homer Garcia said the department is encouraged by the improvements made this year.
“Thanks to our voters who overwhelmingly supported the largest bond program to date, we have the necessary funding to complete more park projects across the city,” he said.
“This not only ensures we’re keeping pace with our city’s growth but that we provide a park system that is equitable and accessible for all members of our community.”
