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Part of our series The Future of Fair Park<\/a>, this column tells one of the park\u2019s recent success stories.<\/p>\n Ron Natinsky does not excuse nor apologize for the mess in his office in the Texas Discovery Gardens on the Fair Park grounds. It just is what it is \u2014 chaos piled all over the floor, spilling out of file cabinets, documents and drawings and God knows what else \u2014 because Natinsky, the former Dallas City Council member now in charge out here, swears he\u2019ll never, ever look at it himself. <\/p>\n \u201cThis stuff \u2026\u201d He emphasizes the word as though it were a profanity. \u201cThis is the way I walked into this office. All of that was left over from the previous operation. So what is this? It\u2019s just stuff. It\u2019s files, it\u2019s reports, it\u2019s studies. It\u2019s watercolor renderings of dreams that they might do out here. This is no way to run a business.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s no better just outside his office door, where a fried electrical breaker box (\u201cThat alone cost us $15,000.\u201d) sits next to two worn-out condenser fans whose battered blades no longer spin. It took two tours over a couple of afternoons for Natinsky to itemize each replacement and repair spread over the Texas Discovery Gardens\u2019 majestic, manicured 7.5 acres.<\/p>\n We began in the mechanical room inside the building, where the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system was being held together with duct tape the first time I saw it. He then showed me the once-unwalkable walkway outside along the 40-foot fountain and the expanded enclosures inside the reptile shack whose previous inhabitants were killed by the deep freeze of February 2021.<\/p>\n Opinion<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n All told, said Natinsky, Texas Discovery Gardens\u2019 executive director, the nonprofit has spent a fortune to do what City Hall couldn\u2019t and what Oak View Group, Fair Park\u2019s just-ousted private operator, wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Ron Natinsky in the mechanical room, where he has spent a fortune of the Texas Discovery Gardens’ revenue making repairs just to keep the building operational.<\/p>\n Anja Schlein \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n \u201cThis place was the epitome of what Fair Park had turned into over the years,\u201d Natinsky said. \u201cWe\u2019ve spent right at $1 million in cold, hard cash to keep this place in the shape it is, to make it functional. The city should have paid that million dollars. But we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n And Fair Park, and South Dallas and the rest of this city, are much better off for it.<\/p>\n When I went out there a couple of months ago, the arts-and-crafts giant Michaels was onsite filming a holiday ad with a big-screen-sized crew using as its home base the perfectly preserved Portland Cement House<\/a>, built for the 1936 Texas Centennial. When I returned a couple of weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon in the heat of State Fair of Texas setup, workers were prepping inside and out for a wedding the next evening. <\/p>\n I ran into the couple doing their final walk-throughs along the spacious lawn, called the Grand All\u00e9e, and asked how they chose Texas Discovery Gardens. The groom-to-be said they\u2019d toured a few of the nearly 200 recommended local sites on The Knot<\/a>, never expecting to wind up at Fair Park. \u201cBut after we got here, after a long day, it was a no-brainer,\u201d he told me. \u201cJust look at the place.\u201d<\/p>\n The entrance of the Texas Discovery Gardens at Fair Park, which opened during the 1936 Texas Centennial at the Hall of Horticulture<\/p>\n Anja Schlein \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n There aren\u2019t many success stories at Fair Park these days \u2014 the Music Hall and the African American Museum and the newly renovated Cotton Bowl<\/a> and … um. If there were, we wouldn\u2019t be in the midst of a series about what ails Fair Park<\/a> (over and over and over). <\/p>\n But time and again, Park and Recreation officials and Park Board members \u2014 and, look, anyone who\u2019s ever been there \u2014 point to Texas Discovery Gardens as one of the few wins out there. In large part, that\u2019s because of a former council member who was downsizing around 2018 and initially just needed a place to stash the enormous garden-train collection he\u2019d assembled.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing what Ron has done out there, especially not getting a lot of support over the last seven years,\u201d said park department director John Jenkins. \u201cJust to see school kids coming in daily \u2014 we haven\u2019t seen that in 20 years. Texas Discovery Gardens is definitely an example of an organization that was able to persevere through adversity. I was worried about TDG seven years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Jenkins why.<\/p>\n All he\u2019d say was, \u201cBecause of the previous operations.\u201d<\/p>\n The Butterfly Garden at the Texas Discovery Gardens is the historic venue’s main attraction, but not its only one.<\/p>\n Anja Schlein \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n As recently as 2019, by which point Fair Park had been handed over to a private operator, the Texas Discovery Gardens, then under the longtime leadership of Dick Davis, was operating at a loss<\/a>. It had, at best, a single attraction: its famed butterfly house. I would bet most people still think that\u2019s all it is, rather than a sprawling, lush wonderland that actually puts the park in Fair Park.<\/p>\n Little wonder it\u2019s finally turning a profit, according to Jenkins and Natinsky, with that money going back into maintaining the facility, which opened in 1936 as the Hall of Horticulture. Money made from entrance fees, wedding rentals, weekend festivals and one-offs like last year\u2019s Lektrik: A Festival of Lights<\/a> will also go toward restoring the rainy-day fund, never more imperative than now, as it always seems to be flash-flooding at Fair Park.<\/p>\n Natinsky said he was first appointed to the TDG board when he started asking why so many things were broken and going unrepaired, how the snakes died in the freeze, why the banisters on the staircase were loose, why the stone walkways were caution-taped-off, why there wasn\u2019t a single ramp for moms with strollers or patrons in wheelchairs, why the HVAC pipes were being held together with duct tape and prayer. <\/p>\n Ron Natinsky, executive director of the Texas Discovery Gardens, standing along the path once roped off because it was broken and inaccessible. Under Natinsky, the TDG has had to spend $1 million on repairs the former private operator was obligated to make but didn’t.<\/p>\n Anja Schlein \/ Special Contributor<\/p>\n Natinsky, who served on the City Council from 2005-2011 and is now semi-retired, told me he essentially pestered the board for so long they finally said, Here, you take the keys if you think you can do a better job. <\/p>\n Which he did. And he did.<\/p>\n![\"Ron](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/OXWFNVMOOVCNRALS6TS525DPCQ.jpg\")
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