Sitting above Interstate 35E traffic, a new playground, band shell and amphitheater are taking shape in southern Dallas as the city’s newest deck park readies to see its first visitors in spring.
“We are bridging the neighborhood,” said April Allen, president and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, which is managing the park. The park will create a gathering space, she said, connecting culture and community atop the freeway and inviting visitors — from Dallas or even international visitors for the FIFA World Cup — to learn about Oak Cliff.
Going into the new year, work at Halperin Park is estimated to be more than 90% complete, Allen said. Across from the Dallas Zoo and within walking distance of two schools, the green space will have water features and a flexible community building that can host food vendors or neighborhood meetings.
The amenities — all part of the first phase set to open in spring at an estimated cost of $122 million — sit atop the highway, where the park will stretch from South Ewing to South Marsalis avenues once complete.
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When Halperin enters its second phase, it will form a tunnel under the park. That phase will take at least four to five years, Allen said, adding the foundation is working with the Texas Department of Transportation to determine when construction begins. Design work on the park’s extension has already started. The park is estimated to cost $300 million overall.
April Allen, president and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, talks about Oak Cliff and her hopes for the future during a tour of the new park set to open in spring on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025 in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
More than $200 million has been raised for the park. The foundation is looking to raise $20 million to complete construction of the first phase and fund the park’s startup operations, transitioning the space from a construction project to a functioning attraction.
With a ribbon-cutting expected in spring, Allen hopes the park will not only serve the community but also invite visitors to see Oak Cliff for themselves. The park has a community event scheduled for summer, when North Texas hosts FIFA World Cup matches.
Park years in the making
When the freeway was built, it sliced through the heart of Oak Cliff, disconnecting communities from downtown Dallas and bulldozing homes belonging to people of color. The new site aims to serve as a bridge between neighborhoods.
A walk of fame in the park’s 12th Street Promenade is expected to honor visionaries who hail from the area. In the fall, the park’s foundation took nominations, which included artists like blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, along with names seen across the city, like Reverchon or Marsalis.
The park is also not far from the Tenth Street Historic District, one of the only remaining intact freedmen’s towns in the nation, where the effects of the new deck park could be felt. Formerly called Southern Gateway Park, the new space was renamed following a $23 million contribution from the Halperin Foundation for the naming rights.
“That was a huge milestone for us,” Allen said. The Halperin family’s commitment was transformational, she said.
Designing a deck park
Halperin is the second deck park to be added to the city’s system, following Klyde Warren in Uptown. Allen said the design drew on lessons from the other space, where cars line up next to the highway and traffic backs up during events. Halperin has a turnaround off the access road that’s wide enough to bring in food trucks, health resources or park school buses.
“It was a very specific design element,” Allen said. “What we heard when we did our community input sessions is that it can just be very difficult to get dropped off … we can also block it off and do fun things out here.”
The park amenities have also been designed to mirror Oak Cliff’s lush, rolling landscape, Allen said. The foliage was planned to be pollinator-friendly, reflecting the prairieland Oak Cliff is known for and to have the highway serve as a route for monarchs.
The bandshell is formed by large arches of mass timber, a type of engineered wood. The community building is also a mass timber construction. The playground is inspired by a tree house in the woods, Allen said.
“You’ll see throughout the park, it has a very natural aesthetic,” Allen said.
Most importantly, Allen said, the park was designed with community in mind, where people can gather in several configurations and form connections. There are numerous places to sit and take in the downtown skyline. Allen hopes the space will serve as a “respite” for the community.
When Allen joined the project in 2020, she said it felt like there was a long way to go before the park’s opening. There was skepticism because “we’ve had a lot of great ideas in southern Dallas, and maybe they haven’t always come to fruition.”
“It’s really exciting to be looking toward an opening and having families and our community here,” she added.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.