Halperin Park opens in Dallas this weekend

A deck park is basically a park built on top of a highway. That sounds like a gimmick until you see what problem it is trying to solve. In Oak Cliff, Interstate 35E cut through neighborhoods decades ago and left a hard physical divide that never really stopped shaping daily life. This weekend, Dallas opened Halperin Park over that trench — and the point is bigger than adding grass and benches. ### What opened this weekend? Halperin Park opened to the public on Saturday, May 9, with a weekend-long launch that included live performances, family activities, fitness classes, food vendors, and Mother’s Day programming on Sunday. The park sits over I-35E between Ewing and Marsalis avenues, right by the Dallas Zoo, and it is Dallas’ second major deck park after Klyde Warren. ### What is the park, physically? The project is a structural deck over the freeway with public space built on top. In its opening phase, it covers about 2.8 acres, with a second phase planned to bring it to roughly 5 acres total. The early build already includes a 12th Street Promenade, a great lawn, a performance shell, shaded gathering areas, play spaces, water features, and elevated overlooks with views toward downtown. (halperinpark.org) ### Why build a park over a highway? Because the highway broke the neighborhood. That is the core idea here. I-35E severed parts of Oak Cliff in the 1950s and 1960s, cutting through homes, businesses, and older community connections. Halperin Park is meant to stitch a piece of that back together by restoring a walkable crossing and turning freeway airspace into usable public ground. (dmagazine.com) ### Why is everyone comparing it to Klyde Warren? Because Klyde Warren is Dallas’ proof that a deck park can change how a city works. That park linked Downtown and Uptown and became a major civic draw. Halperin Park uses the same basic move — cap the freeway, add public space, reconnect streets — but in a very different part of the city, with a much more explicit equity pitch tied to Southern Dallas and Oak Cliff. (halperinpark.org) ### What stands out inside the park? The design is trying hard not to feel generic. There is a mass-timber bandshell with tall arches, a treehouse-themed playground, splash elements, native plantings, shaded seating, and an elevated walkway meant to make visitors feel like they are up in Oak Cliff’s tree canopy. Turns out that matters — a park like this only works if people want to linger, not just cross it. (axios.com) ### Who paid for it? It came together through a public-private partnership. TxDOT built the cap over the highway as part of the I-35E reconstruction. The City of Dallas and the North Central Texas Council of Governments helped fund the deck, and the foundation behind the park raised more than $62 million for amenities and development work. Project cost estimates in local coverage put the full park around $300 million. (keranews.org) ### Why does the money argument matter? Because supporters are not selling this as a nice extra. They are selling it as infrastructure that can change land values, business activity, and neighborhood access. One local estimate says the park could draw more than 2 million visitors a year and generate $1 billion in economic impact over its first five years. That is a projection, not a guarantee — but it shows the scale of the bet. (axios.com) ### So what is the real test now? Opening day is the easy part. The harder part is whether Halperin Park becomes everyday civic space for nearby residents instead of a one-weekend attraction. That means maintenance, programming, shade, safety, easy access, and making the place feel rooted in Oak Cliff rather than dropped onto it. (dmagazine.com) ### Bottom line Halperin Park is a park, but it is also a repair job. Dallas just turned a slice of freeway infrastructure into public space in a part of the city that has waited a long time for that kind of investment. Now the question is whether the park can do what its backers promise — not just look good from above, but actually reconnect the ground below. (halperinpark.org)