Eastward expansion of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park gets catalytic $100 million boost from local philanthropists
First introduced in 2019, the Buffalo Bayou East Master Plan, a community-driven vision that extends Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park eastward from the city’s downtown core to the Port of Houston Turning Basin, received a major jump-start this week in the form of a “transformational” act of largesse from the Kinder Foundation in the form of a $100 million gift. Per the nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP), the planned eastern extension of the existing 160-acre Buffalo Bayou Park, which opened to the public in 2015 after years of planning and renovation work to weave together a 2.3-mile-long patchwork of underutilized and hard-to-access public space along the bayou, is guided by the core values of “authenticity, inclusivity, connectivity, and resiliency” and introduces “new bayou parks, trails, housing, cultural destinations, and infrastructure improvements into the Greater East End and Fifth Ward neighborhoods.”
Working alongside BBP are core master plan collaborators Michael van Valkenburgh Associates (landscape architecture), HR&A Advisors (economic development), Huitt-Zollars (engineering and transportation), LimnoTech (hydrology) and Utile (urban design and architecture).
The Kinder Foundation’s master plan–launching historic gift—the largest single donation earmarked for a park project in Houston history—represents one-third of the $310 million total investment needed to fund the first decade of the Buffalo Bayou East Master Plan and joins $37 million already amassed by the BBP through private fundraising efforts. As noted by the BBP, the project-accelerating gift “unlocks” a considerable sum of public funding, including $83.5 million from the City of Houston, $24 million from Harris County, and $14 million in federal housing tax credits. This puts the BBP in a comfortable position to raise the remaining amount needed for the 10-year plan on its own; it plans to secure $46 million by 2031 through additional fundraising efforts.
Established in 1997 by Missouri-born energy infrastructure billionaire Ricard Kinder and his wife Nancy, the Kinder Foundation is a major philanthropic force in Houston. The Kinder’s giving has been largely focused on urban green space projects, including Memorial Park, Discovery Green, and the first iteration of Buffalo Bayou Park stretching from Shepherd Drive to Sabine Street, as well as educational and cultural initiatives throughout Texas’s most-populous city and beyond. The couple are 2011 signatories of the Giving Pledge.
“Buffalo Bayou Partnership is honored that the Kinder Foundation is entrusting our organization to steward this extraordinary gift,” said Anne Olson, president of Buffalo Bayou Partnership, in a press announcement. “This plan is not only about parks and trails – it is a comprehensive community development plan for a part of town that has not seen this level of investment before. The cultural destinations, infrastructure improvements, and connectivity in Buffalo Bayou East came directly from the input we received from the East End and Fifth Ward communities.”
As detailed by BBP, the Buffalo Bayou East Master Plan truly does encompass a lot more than parks and trails, which will both be expanded and enhanced along the bayou east of downtown Houston and U.S. Route 59. (Two specific parks to be enlarged and revamped under the plan include Tony Marron Park and Japhet Creek.) The plan also calls for multiple pedestrian bridges, boat landings, adaptive reuse projects that will see disused industrial structures be transformed into cultural hubs and community event venues, a 13-acre mixed-income housing development that’s first phase will include 80 multifamily units, and myriad infrastructural upgrades that benefit residents in a largely overlooked part of the city now grappling with gentrification as it emerges from decades of neglect and disinvestment. Notably, the plan fuses together the historic Greater East End and Fifth Ward neighborhoods, which have long been severed by the bayou.
“This gift is especially noteworthy as it touches on two of the city’s underserved communities – the Fifth Ward and East End,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. “Providing and enhancing access from these communities to Buffalo Bayou is particularly important to the city.”
“The visionary plan will enhance our community and serve as a thriving and welcoming destination for Houstonians and visitors,” added Turner. “Public-private partnerships are critically important because there are never enough public funds to address infrastructure and quality of life issues. By working together, we can make a meaningful and enduring impact on the lives of every Houstonian.”
The Buffalo Bayou East Master Plan, a 2020 AN Best of Design Award honorable mention in the Unbuilt Master Plan category, now awaits final city council approval, which is expected to be granted tomorrow.
You can read this week’s big-deal funding-slash-launch announcement in full here and view a comprehensive summary for the Buffalo Bayou East Master Plan here.
