The final plan for Houston’s new downtown park is ready to be unveiled:
Planners have settled on a final design for a new park that could be the centerpiece for the east side of downtown by the end of next year. As Houston Public Radio’s Jack Williams reports, the urban park will include recreation areas, a pond, several restaurants and areas for outdoor concerts.
[snip]
Nancy Kinder is the chairman of the Houston Downtown Park Conservancy and has helped raise $42 million for construction of the park. She says the idea is to build a park that will be a catalyst for new downtown residential construction in the future.
“This is an urban park, which when we started this, we really didn’t know what an urban park was. But an urban park, people live around it, hence we have the dog runs, there are schools now downtown. All of that has already started, so if you look at the park, it’s kind of ten years from now. We built that park hoping that all of the surrounding area will see that same thing that we saw.”
The city of Houston donated more than half the park site and will contribute another $750,000 a year for upkeep.
It sounds grand. And those dog runs should keep the city of Houston busy with upkeep efforts, since Houstonians apparently aren’t very good at cleaning up after their four-legged friends:
Houston has gone to the dogs, according to a new survey ranking America’s major offenders on dog owners scooping their pooches’ poop.
Atop the survey conducted by animal health company Merial Ltd. is the Bayou City as the nation’s worst offender when it comes to pet-owning residents being responsible for scooping up after their dogs.
Watch your step!
(Thanks to Matt Bramanti for the heads up on the downtown park story.)
