Image: City of Austin / Halff
After a year of public engagement and work by planning firm Halff Associates, Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department will present its plan for the improvement of East Austin’s Walter E. Long Park to the city’s Parks and Recreation Board later this month.
We’ve noted for years that the park, which at 3,695 acres including its lake and surrounding land is more than 13 times the size of Zilker Park and the city’s largest by a huge margin, hasn’t received its fair share of attention as one of Austin’s more notable outdoor resources. We’re pleased to announce that may not be the case for very much longer, because this new master plan is totally wild.
A map of the overall master plan for Walter E. Long Park, with its many, many features labeled. These are sadly the highest-quality images we can get for now, but you should be able to read it if you squint. Click for a larger view. Image: City of Austin / Halff
Summary documents for the master plan, prepared by PARD for its upcoming presentation to the Parks and Recreation Board on June 25, outline an elaborate vision for the park’s transformation, and that’s putting it lightly. With an estimated $800 million worth of improvements, this plan is unlike anything we’ve seen from the city before — and though it’s kinda hard to imagine everything in this document actually taking shape, you should still take a nice long gander at these slides.
A rendering of the “Lakeside Park” area of the master plan. There is…a lot going on here. Image: City of Austin / Halff
Despite the slightly disappointing earlier possibility of a golf course, a drained lake, or both, this plan seems a little more creative, not to mention expansive. In addition to a revamped Travis County Expo Center complex, here is only a small selection of the amenities shown off in the presentation:
- Cultural arts center
- Kayak rental facility
- Hiking and equestrian trails
- Boardwalk feature
- Marina
- Rentable cabins
- Visitors center
- Nature center
- Event lawn
- Beach feature
- Pedestrian bridge
- Adventure ropes course
- Sculpture garden
- Mixed-use retail
- Disc golf course
- Observation tower
- “Floating water sports zone”
- Amphitheater
- Planetarium (!)
- Ferris wheel (!!)
Another rendering from the master plan documents, this one showing improvements around the new Travis County Expo Center. Image: City of Austin / Halff
The plan is split into five general areas of improvement, and to better understand the features of each, we’re showing you their respective slides in order. Each area’s map includes a list of its features, giving you an idea of where everything might fit on this enormous tract:
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Area 1: Expo Center
Though the development of a new Travis County Expo Center, as implied by its name, is the responsibility of the county, this master plan imagines significant improvements to its surrounding area. Here you’ll find significant event lawn space, that aforementioned Ferris wheel, and much, much more:
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Area 2: Lakeside Park
This section of the plan concerns itself with upgrading the small existing park space at Walter E. Long, which at the moment is occupied mostly by a boat launch and picnic area. A few features imaged for this area include a boardwalk, kayak rentals, a beach area, disc golf, and whatever a “floating water sports zone” is.
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Area 3: Post Oak Savannah
With a less intensive development strategy for the northeastern corner of the parkland, this area’s where you’ll find the more natural features of the master plan, including a nature center, camping, trails, and a planetarium concept we find particularly enticing.
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Area 4: North Side Park
This section on the north shore of the lake balances development and nature with a new northern entrance closer to Highway 130, and includes a visitor’s center, rental cabins, a marina, another beach, and an “iconic pier feature.”
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Area 5: The Peninsula
Another more natural area located at the tip of the existing Decker Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the Peninsula region includes trails, another boardwalk feature, and event space.
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Phew. That’s a lot to take in, and at an estimated cost of $800 million, it’s clear the master plan is thinking long-term. The folks behind this vision are seemingly going with the strategy of throwing everything at the park and seeing what sticks — and that approach is probably the most effective way to show off to the city and the public just how much we could do with this enormous, overlooked piece of land if we wanted to.
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Despite the enormous scope of the full plan, its first phase brings things down to earth a little with a more reasonable $144 million price tag, starting with some of the upgrades at the Lakeside Park region including a visitors center and event space:
Image: City of Austin / Halff
Even if this imagined future for the lake and its park seems almost suspiciously ambitious, with significant residential and commercial growth on the boards in the immediate area, almost any improvement is welcome at this site — and it would likely take several decades to develop what’s imagined here anyway. Though we won’t learn more details until PARD’s presentation later this month, we already know from these documents that the plan will seek the approval of City Council in August, with its various funding parameters, partnerships, and management structure to be hashed out after that.
Still, even if we built 20 percent of what’s shown in this presentation, Walter E. Long Park would become East Austin’s most impressive public amenity by a huge margin, and that’s something to get hyped about whether or not features like, say, the Ferris wheel and planetarium ever make it to the real world. We certainly hope they do, mind you, but pointing more eyes toward the future of this unsung parkland is absolutely good news for the city either way.
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