After decades of asking, East Dallas neighbors are getting 2 new recreation centers at Exall Park & White Rock Hills

This may be the age of the recreation center in Dallas.

Per the voter-approved 2024 bond proposal, recreation centers are being renovated and improved throughout the city. Many of the recreation center-related bond projects have lower budgets and won’t be huge undertakings. But doing any renovations at all shows that the City considers those spaces as worth maintaining on some level.

In East Dallas, that includes new centers at Exall Park and White Rock Hills Park. Both are in the design phase, and a couple of community meetings have been held by architectural firms for each project to get feedback from neighbors.

The new recreation center at the historic Exall Park in Bryan Place is replacing the current one in the same location, but it is expected to increase its sqaure footage.

“My biggest project ever is the Exall Rec Center,” District 14 Park and Recreation Board member Rudy Karimi says. “When I go speak in front of people, I say, ‘This is the second biggest investment in Council District 14 parks ever. Anybody want to guess the first?’ Some people know it; some people don’t — Klyde Warren, and that was, at the time, a $20-plus million investment. Well, now we’re $18 million.”

Friends of Exall Park members have been pushing for a new recreation center since the 2000s. Karimi describes the current one as being inadequate for a long time.

“It was always small,” he says. “There’s nothing visually appealing to it. There’s nothing historically or architecturally significant to that building.”

Forward motion started happening in 2022 as Karimi and Council member Paul Ridley put the project on the front burner.

“It was always my No. 1 priority because I remember the first time I went to a rec center when I was a kid, when I rode my bike to a rec center, and those things stay with you,” Karimi says. “The community near Exall doesn’t have that because there’s really nothing to do there.”

The one in White Rock Hills Park, which just opened in 2021 at Ferguson and Highland Roads, will be completely new to the community. During a public meeting regarding the recreation center, one woman was thanked more than once for her dedication to this project — Vikki Martin, Ferguson Road Initiative executive director.

FRI was born in the ’90s in response to “escalating violent crime,” says Martin, who was a teacher in her mid-30s around this time. Through town hall meetings, Martin and her peers realized a lot was missing from their community, like sidewalks, a library and, of course, a recreation center.

Technically, White Rock Hills is sandwiched between two recreation centers — Samuell Grand to the west and Harry Stone to the northeast. These may be accessible by vehicle but not by foot.

“The analysis that we have done now that we’re getting the rec center is to walk to Harry Stone is over an hour from this area,” Martin says. “Samuell Grand may seem close geographically, but there are barriers to getting there — no sidewalk, going around the golf course.”

So Martin and the FRI rallied to get needs met and shut down problematic businesses.

“Where the rec center is, that’s where two crime magnet apartments were,” Martin says. “And the park next door, that was the first apartment we got torn down in 1996.”

More recently, the City has fulfilled major initiatives, like White Rock Hills Branch Library opening in 2012, Highland Road getting sidewalks and bike lanes in 2022, and Trinity Forest Spine Trail connecting Far East Dallas to the City’s trail system in 2023.

The path to getting a recreation center hasn’t been a crystal stair for a few reasons, according to Martin. It’s an expensive endeavor, and it has shifted from three different City Council districts over the past 26 years as the maps have been redrawn. Money was allocated to the design and construction of the recreation center, but it turned out not to be enough, so the land was bought as neighbors waited for the next bond cycle.

The future center is located technically in District 2, but District 7 Park and Recreation Board member Daniel Wood knows it will benefit the people he represents in White Rock Hills.

“They’re going to do a great center,” Wood says. “It’s going to be awesome, and they’ve advocated for many, many years, and that’s the important thing, is the community has advocated for it, so the community has finally achieved what they’ve asked for, and they worked hard to get there.”

To Martin, the White Rock Hills Recreation Center’s benefit will extend beyond its walls.

“The rec center will be a catalyst for improved housing, redeveloped housing and potential better quality economic development,” she says.

She explains how she wants to see “stable” developers tear down old apartments with poor living conditions and build something better. And who wouldn’t want to live near a park and recreation center to take advantage of the amenities and programs provided?

Many concrete details about both the Exall and White Rock Hills projects are still up in the air as design is being worked on, but it is clear that residents are envisioning these spaces as more than just a place for sports or exercise. In addition to weight rooms and space for exercise classes, they want centers that fit the unique characteristics of their neighborhoods while also including a kitchen and intergenerational community spaces. Local art may have a place in both centers.

Karimi, who spoke highly of the community input process so far, identified two objectives that need to be addressed after the second public meeting for Exall: making sure the building doesn’t majorly obstruct nearby neighbors’ view of Downtown and deciding how big to make the parking lot.

The parking topic came up in the first meeting as well. Architects proposed expanding it per the City’s code, but neighbors differed on whether that would be helpful, since the current lot tends to fill up, or if making it bigger would attract unsavory activity.

Karimi isn’t worried about the lot bringing crime or bad behavior since it’s a dense and activated area with lots of people using the park, which can act as a deterrent, and is surrounded by neighbors who will likely call the police if necessary.

But the park board representative also doesn’t want to have too much parking because it’s “virtually impossible” to revert concrete back into green space once it has already happened. (A discussion of having too much parking also came up at a White Rock Hills Recreation Center community meeting.) Adding more spots after the fact if the lot ends up too small is more doable.

“To me, that’s a fail-fast option. ‘OK, we failed. We didn’t give you enough parking spots. Well, let’s create a new design six months down the road, a year down the road, to add an additional eight spots here while still preserving the charm that you approach from this corner’ because there’s nothing charming about being greeted by a parking lot right in your face,” Karimi says. “Exall is very charming because there’s a friends group, and they do these little pocket gardens and things like that, and they have them scattered throughout the park. And when you walk up to Exall, you’re greeted in a very positive, kind of friendly way. A parking lot ain’t going to do that for you.”

Also, Karimi says the center is currently underutilized because it doesn’t have a gymnasium. So it makes sense that once it is reconstructed with a gym, more people will come out, including those from outside the neighborhood. He doesn’t think the parking lot should be any less than 60-65 spots.

Both recreation centers have similar timelines and may open at the end of 2028, depending on how fast or slow the process goes.

“It seems like a gabillion years away, but in the grand scheme of city life and projects getting done in the city, you blink your eyes three times, and boom, you’re done,” Karimi says. “Things do move quickly.”

When White Rock Hills Recreation Center is built, that won’t necessarily be the end of the story as it is meant for additional phases, perhaps through strategic partnerships, in the future, Martin says.

So is this the age for Dallas recreation centers? Citywide, Karimi thinks not, but definitely for East Dallas as neighbors from both around Exall Park and White Rock Hills were fired up. When mentioning Exall Park’s project to redo the recreation center, Martin only had three words to say: “It needs it.”

“We were having a moment. It wasn’t like that across town, though,” Karimi says. “There were other park board members who said, ‘I don’t want to put $5 million into renovating my existing rec center because I need it for something else.’ And they had their valid purposes. But here, different story. Give us these rec centers because they’re missing right now.”