COLONY DISTRICT PARK
DOVE SPRINGS DISTRICT PARK
WATERLOO PARK
Growing GeNaC Besides collecting developer fees, the city can use money from nonpro ts, bonds and grants to acquire parkland.
MAGGIE QUINLAN COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
MAGGIE QUINLAN COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
MAGGIE QUINLAN COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
SOURCE: CITY OF AUSTIN PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
CoStar, the city’s available land is close to $2 million an acre. Outside of parkland purchases, the city averages roughly $870,000 per acre, Lyons said. Keeping up While Austin ranks 72nd among the 100 largest U.S. cities in terms of overall percentage of people who live within a half-mile walk of a park, it is quickly improving, per data from Trust for Public Land, a national non- pro t. It ranked 8th for the largest year-over-year increase in access. Since 2016, the city has used parkland dedication fee dollars to acquire43acresof landacross 15parks, according to data from the city. More than $22 million from developers’ fees is assigned to ongoing park
of land in the Lakeshore area for 48 parkland acres. Will Klein, project manager for parks research at Trust for Public Land, said increasing access to parks is not necessarily about acquiring as much land as possible, but securing parkland in the right highly-populated areas. “If we don’t buy them now, you’ll never be able to buy them. The cost of land is so expensive and it’s not going to get cheaper,” Wallis said. “We need to continue to invest in those parks, so when Austin grows to 4 million instead of 2 million people, we’ve land-banked those parks for future generations.”
projects. Overall, parkland dedication fees paid for about 8% of parkland acres acquired by the city since 2017, according to the data. Wallis said the city ultimately needs help from outside funding sources to reach its eventual goal of 24 acres per 1,000 residents. The city can fund parks through grants from the state, spending approved by voters through bonds, and philanthropy. Recently, philanthropy funded much of Waterloo Park’s development. The development of Dove Springs District Park and Colony District Park were both funded in part by grants from Texas Parks & Wildlife. Proposition B, approved by Austin voters Nov. 2, will allow the city to o er a trade of 9 acres
to a ord those projects. Jorgensen said a 2014 study from Landscape and Urban Planning found that while adding green space in urban areas promotes public health, that space can also, “create paradoxical e ects such as gentri cation.” “There is this idea that you need to make places just green enough,” Jorgensen said. Lyons said the price developers pay is actually low by some estimates. Currently, the fees are based on roughly the cost of $166,000 an acre, Lyons said. She said by one estimate from commercial real estate rm
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SOUTHWEST AUSTIN DRIPPING SPRINGS EDITION • NOVEMBER 2021
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