Houston undergoing a green-space renaissance

When Beth White looks at a map of Houston's expansive stretch of bayous, trails and park, she sees an elaborate jigsaw puzzle of sorts. Some of the pieces fit together but many do not.

It will be up to White and her colleagues at the Houston Parks Board to ultimately make those pieces come together as Bayou Greenways 2020, a project that aims to transform the city's fragmented landscape into a 150-mile network of parks and off-street trails.

White and other project supporters are quick to point out that the project is more than just connecting trails on a map. It's about connecting the 2 million people who live in the sprawling city of Houston.

"Why I'm so passionate about this project is because it's not just a hike and bike trail, though I do think that part is just extraordinary," said White, who became president and chief executive officer of the Houston Parks Board in 2016. "We know from previous studies that most people won't visit a park that is a mile and half away from their home. When Bayou Greenways is complete, more than 60 percent of Houston's population will be within a mile and a half of a park. That's an amazing thing, especially for a city this size."

The $200 million project is driving Houston's current green-space renaissance, a move that could redefine the way the rest of the world sees the city beyond the typical trappings of sprawl, pollution and energy sector dominance.

The Parks Board is shepherding the project, which occupies most - though not all - of the nonprofit's time these days. The Parks Board continues to work with a constellation of neighborhood groups to improve neighborhood parks and recreational facilities across Houston. For example, last year the nonprofit helped groups put in batting cages at several parks, spruced up tennis centers at two parks, funded trail repairs and helped secure a historic trolley replica.

The scale of the Bayou Greenways 2020 project is just one of the many things that appealed to White when she was considering taking the helm of the Houston Parks Board, created in 1976 to develop, protect and advocate for parkland in the Greater Houston area.

Before coming to Houston, White was a nationally respected advocate for public spaces, most recently serving as the director of the Trust for Public Land in Chicago. There, White had shepherded a number of acclaimed projects, including a 3-mile-long elevated trail system, the 606.

Bayou Greenways was a different animal White quickly pieced together as she rode along Buffalo Bayou on a bicycle during her job interview last year. It was bigger, more expensive and, arguably, more complicated.

White was sold.

At that the point, the project was well underway. In 2012, Houston voters overwhelmingly approved a major bond referendum providing $166 million in parks funding, $100 million of which was set aside for Bayou Greenways 2020.

But the plan required the Parks Board to raise another $100 million to pay for the project, a daunting amount of money for any nonprofit, even one that has the kind of deep partnerships that the Parks Board has enjoyed for decades.

Fortunately for Bayou Greenways, the Houston-based Kinder Foundation had been keeping tabs on the project. It certainly meshed with the foundation's goals of supporting big, transformational projects and those that preserved the city's green space.

The foundation provided crucial financial support to two of Houston's marquis open space projects - Discovery Green and Buffalo Bayou Park.

"We knew internally that if the city of Houston wanted to do it that badly, we were going to do half," said Nancy Kinder, the foundation's president.

The foundation's $50 million donation, made in late 2013, was the largest donation in the history of Houston's park system and one of the largest grants to a public green space in the United States.

To date, more than 32 miles of the 47-mile project have been designed and 5.5 miles have been built.

Already, Houston residents are starting to take notice of the new connections between parks and trails.

Amy Dinn, a resident of the Idylwood neighborhood and president of the civic club there, said she can now ride her bike on trails that stretch from her neighborhood all the way to Hermann Park.

"The Bayou Greenways project provides my neighborhood to a much a bigger part of Houston," said Dinn, who has also received help from the Parks Board to install a canoe launch on Brays Bayou. "My husband and I can now ride to Hermann Park on our tandem bike, which is something we love."

Work on several Bayou Greenways projects began in earnest last year and continued in 2017 on segments of Brays, White Oak, Halls and Sims bayous.

Kinder said she's happy to see Houston residents using the segments of the project that are complete.

"We get excited about this project every time we hear about it," Kinder said. "People keep saying it will change the face of Houston, and I really believe that."

White said that when the construction work is over, the work of the Parks Board is only just beginning.

The nonprofit must "activate" Bayou Greenways project once it's built, White said. In other words, the Parks Board wants to make sure all of Houston knows about the network of trails and parks, and knows how to access it in ways that makes sense to them.