Fair Park is a 277-acre park and historic fairground located in South Dallas. It is home to the largest collection of publicly-owned Art Deco architecture and art in the U.S., and has been an incubator for the region’s most prestigious museums, institutions, and events. The history of Fair Park is rich and vast, but the campus and community have not always been actively and positively engaged. Fair Park’s new management seeks to change that by creating new and improved green space curated by the community.

Fair Park is primed to become the “Central Park of the South” with the Master Plan Update as its guiding North Star. The new campus of Fair Park will continue to have an unparalleled landscape of historic buildings, public art, and cultural attractions, but now with the added bonus of improved greenspaces designed to stitch the campus together with activities, connections, and collaborations to create a multi-dimensional experience at Fair Park

The principal goal of the Phase One Capital Campaign Plan is to revitalize the Park through greenspace and building restoration. The grounds consist of over 75% impervious surfaces (concrete and bituminous pavements and buildings) with parking lots accounting for most. This overarching issue lays the foundation of the plan’s recommendations—to turn grey into green, increase the site’s resiliency, and create more usability. This issue alone has numerous repercussions—a heat island effect that makes the grounds 45 degrees warmer on sunny days, increased stormwater issues, and recurring damage to historic resources.

The site today consists of more than 200 pieces of public art and 40 historic buildings across 277 acres. The campus is also four-sided and sits adjacent to four very different communities. With such a sprawling and diverse site, the Phase One Capital Campaign Plans propose an 18-acre Community Park and Parking Garage, a 1.3-acre MLK Neighborhood Park, and the restoration of many Park buildings and art installations including, but not limited to, the Magnolia Lounge, the Cotton Bowl, Centennial building, Tower building, Texas History Frieze, Centennial building Murals, Raoul Josset Mural and Sculpture at the Women’s building, and more.

These green nodes are meant to remove the grey moats of parking lots that separate the Park from the neighboring communities, provide accessible park space year-round, even during major events, and create a contiguous campus.