The vision of a space that would reconnect east and north Oak Cliff is becoming ever more real, with each passing day seeing us closer to the completion of Halperin Park.
The city’s newest deck park, part of an effort to address the divisions our highways created, offers striking vistas not only of Oak Cliff but of our beautiful skyline and changing neighborhoods. Standing on the roof of the new community building, something you’re encouraged to do, you can see downtown and Fair Park. The view alone is worth the visit.
Most of the park’s amenities are near completion, including water features, a band shell and a children’s playground. All that’s missing are the kids.
Anyone unfamiliar with our city’s history might miss the park’s deeper significance. Stretching over Interstate 35E, this is a literal and figurative reunion of neighborhoods the highway pulled apart.
Opinion
Halperin Park is living up to its promise to be a bridge, with new development already underway in East Oak Cliff, including the East Dock project, a mixed-use plan to repurpose a 1900s-era icehouse.
Still, there is work to be done, and more support is needed to be ready for a ribbon cutting this spring in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The Oak Cliff Gateway Tax Increment Financing District board of directors approved two funding requests earlier this month. The requests will head to the City Council for a vote Jan. 28. The park needs $7 million from TIF district tax revenue that will come from future development in the surrounding area and about $1 million from the 2012 General Obligation Bond Program’s economic development grant.
Halperin Park’s playground, designed to look like a treehouse as a tribute to Oak Cliff’s Blackland Prairie ecosystem, on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025 in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
The council should approve this funding and help the park get to the finish line. We expect they will.
Halperin Park has been a true public-private partnership, with about 60% of its funding raised from donors, including the extraordinary generosity of Gayle and Jim Halperin, whose $23 million gift helped change the shape and function of our city for the better.
From a budget of $122 million for Phase I of the park, $12 million remains to be raised from donors, said April Allen, president and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation. That includes an extra $10 million for operations so the park can begin programming and hiring staff.
To this point, the city’s contribution to Halperin Park has been relatively modest, about $7 million, Allen said, but there have been conversations with the city to increase its contribution. The city committed $20 million for Klyde Warren Park, the other deck park in Dallas.
Last week, construction workers were putting the finishing touches on a stairway to the community building’s roof. Just a stone’s throw away was the great giraffe statue fronting the Dallas Zoo.
The beauty of the space and the opportunity it is creating are equally wonderful to see.
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