Austin’s Finally Fixing Up John Treviño Metro Park — But Not Too Much

Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

Only twenty scant acres smaller than Zilker Park, the 330-acre tract of former ranchland at the edge of District 1 now known as John Treviño Jr. Metro Park is perhaps the second most underutilized park space in far East Austin.

The first, of course, is Walter E. Long Metro Park, but the almost bizarrely ambitious $800 million master plan for that enormous potential recreational asset many Austinites have never heard of is not exactly the model for improvement nearby residents would prefer for the Treviño property. In fact, their initial feedback seems to imply they’d like the City of Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department to take a lighter touch, and perhaps consider starting out by simply unlocking the gate. 

The entrance of the future park. Photo by James Rambin.

The parkland, which has never been open to the public, is accessed from FM 969 about two and a half miles east from Highway 183, and backs up to the Colorado River at its southern end. Though the area’s clearly got plenty of natural beauty, the site is largely undeveloped outside of a few remaining buildings from its previous life of farming and ranching before the city’s purchase of the land in 2003.

Looking south towards the parkland from FM 969. Photo by James Rambin.

A 2006 City Council vote named the future park for John Treviño Jr., Austin’s first Mexican-American council member, but plans for further development here have been scarce in the years since — besides some speculation in 2016 that massive city-owned tracts of this nature could someday help ease the burden on Zilker Park’s facilities by hosting music festivals and other event programming.

A map of the site and its surrounding features. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

That changed earlier this year with the city’s approval of a contract in January to hire consultants from Seattle landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol for the development of a master plan towards the park’s improvement. The GGN plan is currently scheduled for completion in early 2020, but at the moment, the architects and parks department are working through the public engagement process to better understand the community’s priorities for the space. 

A photo of a tree at the park site, with its location identified on an inset map. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

At a meeting earlier this week, representatives of the parks department showed off a few early conclusions from the public engagement already conducted, with a few subsequent planning values identified from that input. We’ll see more specific design concepts later this summer and likely have the opportunity to vote on a few alternatives for development, but at the moment, we just know the existing conditions of the site and the conclusions of the department’s survey results.

The results of the parks department’s initial survey for park improvement priorities. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

Reading between the lines a little, those results already give us a pretty clear picture of what nearby residents would prefer in terms of improvements here: “Make it better, but don’t screw it up.” That’s the synthesis you’ll take away from a lot of community engagement on master plans of this variety, with most people having a better idea of what they don’t want than what they might enjoy. But in the case of Treviño Park, its neighbors — residents of a community historically underserved in terms of the city’s park improvements, it’s worth noting — seem to have a pretty valid point in this case.

The river section of the property, with its location also shown on the inset map. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

The Disneyland-esque master plan for the nearby Walter E. Long Park, though it still has its opponents, feels a bit more acceptable since the lake itself is artificial — created for the cooling needs of a power plant, enabled by a dam, and sustained at its consistent level only with the help of frequent pumping from the Colorado River.

Treviño Park, on the other hand, is almost entirely natural — a mix of open Blackland Prairie fields, mature live oaks, mesquite and ashe juniper thickets, and a biodiverse riparian habitat near the river. In other words, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to put a Ferris wheel here, and the aforementioned light touch requested by neighbors during this stage of community input looms large over the early visions of the plan.

A map from GGN’s site survey of the parkland, this slide showing the erosion conditions of the area’s stretch of the Colorado River. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

The focus, as it appears right now, is just getting people inside the park, with trail and transit connectivity as some of the more important priorities — along with preserving as much of the natural habitat as possible, keeping and adapting the existing buildings on the property, and providing safe river access at the rear of the site. Simple amenities like public restrooms and picnic facilities are also high on the list.

A slide from GGN’s site survey of the parkland, summing up the opportunities and challenges presented by the tract. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

But perhaps the most fascinating possible future discussed in these documents for a portion of the parkland is an acknowledgement of its former agricultural history in the form of some kind of community farming — which, in the words of the parks department’s preliminary vision, would “…carry the site’s productive agricultural heritage into the present and future by exploring possibilities for food production and agricultural education.” 

Two slides from the parks department’s presentation earlier this week, showing the initial vision and priorities for the future master plan. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department / GGN

Considering the size of the Treviño tract, a fairly large agricultural facility could easily share this parkland with the rest of its desired improvements — something like the parks department’s existing urban gardening program on steroids, with plenty of additional space available for educational facilities. It might sound a little quaint, but the community benefits of urban agricultural programs are pretty well-documented.

This sort of operation lines up uncannily well with a recent unanimous recommendation of the Austin-Travis County Food Policy Board, regarding the suitability of agriculture on unused city and county-owned land as a component of local sustainability. We’re not saying it’s a done deal, but the odds seem pretty good!

Either way, the real test will arrive on August 24, when the parks department holds its third engagement meeting and presents more specific concepts for this land’s possible future. We’ll be following all the twists and turns, but until then, just knowing this future park exists is a good start — you’d be surprised how many people don’t.

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