Turtle Creek's About to Get a Master Plan

By Robert Wilonsky Wed., Nov. 25 2009 at 9:50 AM

Categories: News

Patrick Michels

While we're looking ahead at City Hall meetings, says here that the Park and Recreation Board will be briefed next Thursday on the Turtle Creek Master Plan. Which is ...? Well, specifics are hard to come by: City Hall's closed till Monday, and Katherine Kosut at Booziotis & Company Architects, who designed the plan on behalf of the Turtle Creek Association, is out of the office today as well. But the TCA's Web site has the broad-brush strokes of the plan, which has been in the works ever since Boston-based Antonio Di Mambro was commissioned by the association to conduct a study and make recommendations back in '04.

According to the TCA, the purpose of the master plan is to integrate ongoing improvement projects in the area -- including those involving the Katy Trail, Reverchon Park and William B. Dean Park, upon which the Dallas Theater Center's Kalita Humphreys Theater sits -- into "a framework to interlock the many plans into a holistic system of 'whole.'" The TCA spells out the master plan's five key categories:

1. Waterway and floodplain improvements to restore the ecological balance.
2. Urban design improvements to roadways; pathways; bridges; nodes and special places; urban furniture; and lighting.
3. Landscape and vegetation improvements to reverse decay and establish biodiversity within the Turtle Creek Corridor through a variety of measures such as a reforestation and tree maintenance plan.
4. Maintain and upgrade multi-functional open green spaces with the parks.
5. Connecting transit options such as the trolley system to the Turtle Creek Corridor.

The TCA figures it'll take, oh, 25 years to implement the plan, which would be paid for via "private fund raising and public grants."

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