‘Boneyard’ park, pocket plaza and more

The Santa Fe Trail is true to the Old East Dallas neighborhoods through which it runs — an unassuming workhorse of concrete with few amenities but frequented by the grand diversity of age, race and background that makes this the best part of our city.

Yes, I’m biased. This is where I live and where most days I run. But it’s no exaggeration that the Santa Fe Trail — which at one end connects into White Rock Lake and at the other into Fair Park, Deep Ellum and downtown — is unique.

The 4.5-mile trail serves as a vital corridor for job commuters who rely on bikes or their own two feet. It also is the connective tissue joining disparate neighborhoods in a way that allows us to get to better know one another.

Spandex, baby strollers and stick-carrying senior citizens all have a place on the Santa Fe Trail. So do the biking workers headed to downtown office buildings or fast-food joints.

For more than a decade, I’ve exchanged a “virtual hug” with an ageless Latina runner clad year-round in a dark hoodie and heavy headphones. Farther down the trail, the younger of a mother-and-daughter pair has grown over these many years from a little girl to a college-bound teen.

Students swagger to adjacent DISD campuses, dog walkers pause for small talk and a local judge calls out his critique of my most recent column.

“This trail has had a big impact on a lot of people for a long time,” Friends of the Santa Fe Trail board member Amanda Schulz told me. “And with improvements, it will have even more.”

Thanks to the nonprofit Friends group, a blueprint — and the start of real funding behind it — is in place to make the trail safer, more accessible and more connected to the neighborhoods that surround it.

In a city deservedly dinged for often failing to get sufficient community members to the table for project planning, Friends of the Santa Fe Trail put in years of work to do it right.

Members of the city’s Park and Recreation Board praised the outreach strategy before unanimously adopting the master plan in June. More than 1,000 suggestions from residents and trail users went into the plan, prepared by Dallas-based landscape architects Studio Outside.

What might sound like meat-and-potatoes to Katy Trail users are still big-deal items to us in East Dallas, especially the creation of real trailheads at the many intersections southwest of Glasgow Drive where we endure traffic too often blind to pedestrians.

And a big “heck, yes” to better lighting and more water fountains, seating and shade.

A cyclist rides the Santa Fe Trail under the Brookside Drive bridge on Sunday in Dallas. (Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer)

The Sante Fe plan is braided with improvements that will give its southern half the welcoming feel already evident on its northern piece. Beyond the Brookside Drive overpass, the trail moves into a lush canopy of overhanging trees and offers more inviting spots to enter and exit than available on its other end.

Among the biggest makeovers is the proposed transformation of the barren “T” intersection near Exposition Plaza, where the trail splits to Fair Park and Deep Ellum.

Based on an idea by former park director Willis Winters, an “artifacts park” is planned for the nearby green space, where today homeless individuals often camp. The park would feature items currently stored in the city’s “boneyard,” architectural bits and pieces rescued from deteriorated or demolished buildings.

“These items of interest and history could be used in this space in a respectful and interesting way rather than just being stored somewhere,” said Schulz, an East Dallas resident and former park board representative.

Architect Samuel Mortimer, president-elect of the Friends group and key to the master plan’s creation, described the artifacts park as one of the “exclamation points” along the trail.

He hopes another of the first completed projects is the pocket plaza for pedestrians at the Santa Fe’s midpoint, alongside the Brookside bridge and not far from the JL Long Middle School-Woodrow Wilson High School campus, to provide trailside activities and better access.

The “T” intersection at the southwest end of the Santa Fe Trail, where the route splits to Fair Park and Deep Ellum, will get a big facelift under the Friends of the Santa Fe Trail master plan.(Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer)

“The work at the ‘T’ and at Brookside — executing these small but really interesting projects as soon as possible — will demonstrate our abilities to stakeholders and show the direction we want to go,” Mortimer said.

A daily bike commuter who has lived downtown since moving to Dallas nine years ago, Mortimer uses the Santa Fe regularly. He understands its importance as transportation infrastructure and its place in the 50-mile LOOP hike-and-bike project.

Mortimer also has kept careful watch on the development popping up around it.

He is intent on the Friends group being at the table to make sure the right decisions are made for the Santa Fe and its surrounding neighborhoods. “I want a trail that connects the central business district to one of the best assets in Dallas, White Rock Lake, in a way that’s uniquely special,” he said.

Mortimer also is jazzed by the partnerships opportunities, both with other nonprofits such as Fair Park First and Deep Ellum Foundation and with developers looking for trail-oriented amenities.

“Their help could accelerate our efforts and make everybody’s efforts better,” he said.

With the master plan adopted, Mortimer’s group is in talks with the park department on a formal development agreement and how the Santa Fe’s needs fit into 2024 bond planning.

It’s a good thing we East Dallas dwellers are a gritty lot who don’t require fancy improvements overnight. Hammering out bond priorities is a long, tough road, and private fundraising will play a big part in what gets done soonest.

Breast cancer survivor Brenda Munden, second from right, and Melissa Muldowney walk on a portion of the Santa Fe Trail near the Brookside Drive bridge while participating in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day event Sunday.(Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer)

Larkspur Capital, which has developed The Willow apartment project near the “T” intersection, recently gave $25,000 toward the $75,000 the Friends group hopes to raise by year’s end.

Schulz, the nonprofit’s fund-raising chair, said Dallas philanthropist Lyda Hill and White Rock Alehouse & Brewery have also made donations.

With matching funds from the city, Mortimer expects work on several of the projects, including the artifacts park and Brookside plaza, could begin next year.

Also planned for early spring are large tree-planting projects along barren sections of the Santa Fe as well as improvements around the Old East Dallas Work Yard Park, which is adjacent to the trail and the area of ​​several shootings this year.

The gun incidents didn’t target trail users, but they’ve understandably unnerved some of its regular walkers, runners and bikers.

No one seems deterred from using the trail; it’s a matter of paying more attention to our surroundings. After all, we’ve managed to coexist for years with the occasional gunshots, threats from homeless individuals and smartphone robberies.

A cyclist on one of the elevated sections of the Santa Fe Trail, not far from Deep Ellum, with downtown in the background Sunday. (Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer)

Unlike trails that are isolated from their surrounding communities, the Santa Fe’s southern half runs through the heart of them — alongside El Paisano restaurant, Hamm’s Tires, Julia’s Resale Shop, Emmanuel Assembly of God and ramshackle rental duplexes — often with the downtown skyline as a backdrop.

Every few months a couple of adjacent small mom-and-pop stores or fame houses fall prey to the bulldozer and a little more of the funkiness that makes Old East Dallas special gives way to big and boxy dullness.

Our best hope is that new development understands the importance of the Santa Fe Trail and pitches in to make it better.

Although $17 to $20 million would be needed to accomplish everything in the master plan, Mortimer said the trail will be “light years ahead of where we are now” even if funds fall short of those amounts.

“As we raise the southern end of the trail up and make that a much nicer place, we will see skyrocketing use,” Mortimer said. “This can be a welcoming thoroughfare for everyone.”

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