Houston Chronicle | by Diane Cowen | 9.9.21
The Memorial Park land bridge that will add 25 acres of native prairie over six lanes of traffic has reached a construction milestone: Two pairs of concrete tunnel tubes are in place with 500,000 cubic yards of dirt piled on top.
Passersby essentially see four giant mounds of dirt where Houstonians used to run, walk and play, but it’s now possible to envision how people and wildlife can traverse the north and south sides of the park safely and in an environment true to the city’s origin as Gulf Coast prairie.
Thomas Woltz, owner and principal at the Nelson Byrd Woltz landscape architecture firm that developed the park’s master plan and designed the land bridge over Memorial Drive, said that the project and others like it elsewhere are a timely answer to urban density and encroaching freeways.
“We’re in a fascinating moment where we have built our cities without generous planning of public spaces, unfortunately, and this is across America, not just Houston,” Woltz said. “We build buildings and look for where we can make public green space. It’s where we find ourselves as a nation.
“It occurs to us, what if the landscape could become triumphant over the gray infrastructure of an urban city? What if we could lift people, plants, prairie and wildlife up and over this tear through the public park?” Woltz said. “We basically are generating new acreage of parkland above the highway. It’s the park triumphing over the highway.”