Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
Emancipation Park in Houston’s Third Ward.
Houston’s historic Emancipation Park will undergo a major expansion project over the next eight months, renovating the park’s cultural center and creating a new outdoor performance stage.
The Emancipation Park Conservancy (EPC) announced the $18.5 million initiative on Monday and hopes to finish construction by June 2026, in time for the park’s annual Juneteenth celebration.
“This investment in Emancipation Park is about more than expanding a space; it’s about preserving history and creating a vibrant hub for cultural expression,” Ramon Manning, board chair of the EPC, said in a statement. “It builds on the park’s improvements in 2014 by allowing us to increase programming capacity and ensure the park remains a central gathering place for performances, celebrations, and community connection.”
“We’re witnessing in real time Houston’s greatness,” Mayor John Whitmire said at the project’s unveiling on Monday. “While most of the large cities in America are in turmoil, disagreements, political fights — I could go on and on what’s differing cities apart — today we’re celebrating a huge expansion of one of our jewels.”
The $18.5 million project will ultimately expand two parts of the park. First, by creating a new performance stage, green room facilities, a climate-controlled storage facility, and an audio-visual tech room.
The rest of the project will remodel the cultural center, including adding a gift shop space and new audio-visual capabilities for rentals and community events.
The cultural center and the lawn between the cultural center and the recreation center at Emancipation Park will be closed through construction.