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Afterword
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
mann Park Conservancy is already planning for its next century. Immediate future plans for the park include an off-leash dog park and a healing garden, within park property, across the street from the Texas Medical Center. We will enhance educational programming as children in this increasingly dense city become more cut off from the natural world. We will continue to emphasize the health benefits of trees in an urban environment, the rich vitality found in a coastal prairie, and the magic of watching food come from the ground. The park’s centennial year, 2014, will bring many celebrations of the park: publication of this book, a kite festival, a bike ride along the new Brays Bayou trails to the Houston Ship Channel, and dedication of the Grand Gateway and the Centennial Gardens that will substantially complete the 1994 master plan. We will also host public art programs to bring people together to see both the art and the park in new ways. The Hermann Park Conservancy dares to dream of the rich, endless possibilities for the park’s next hundred years. Join us! Doreen Stoller Executive Director, Hermann Park Conservancy T he revitalization of Hermann Park is a miracle of community engagement. Determined to rejuvenate the park, supporters from the conservancy’s early days wisely realized that a strong public/private partnership would be necessary to create a lasting transformation . At a time when few such partnerships existed in the United States, Houstonians joined with public agencies, especially the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department, to renew the park project by project. Twenty years later, Hermann Park has become a place not just loved by the Houston community, but also supported by it, through its institutions , corporations, and families. Thousands of people have given money and thousands more have given their time as volunteers working in the park and participants in public, board, and committee meetings to guide the park’s future. It takes this level of personal commitment to sustain the successful public/private partnership we have in Hermann Park. This commitment also builds community — evident any pretty afternoon when you can hear a dozen different languages and see people of every age enjoying the park. While this book captures Hermann Park’s first hundred years, HerAfterword Train Tunnel Mural (2014, Trenton Doyle Hancock). Source: James Cohan Gallery, New York and Shanghai. Courtesy Hermann Park Conservancy. ...