Dear Mayor Watson, Austin City Council Members, Parks Board, and Parks Staff;
The draft Zilker Park plan calls for hundreds of millions of new spending to build 3 or 4 parking garages, 5 new bridges (1 over Lady Bird Lake, 3 over Barton Creek, and a "land bridge" over Barton Springs Road), at least 3 new commercial concession centers, 3 new roads, 3 new structured playgrounds, an "information center," a "welcome center," and a new sports complex next to Mopac's noise and polluted air.
This draft Plan is expensive, bleak, and wholly out of step with Austin's values and immediate needs. It is designed to convert Zilker Park into a year-around events and entertainment center -- in other words, an amusement park for commercial interests that already occupy and control Zilker Park for several months every year. Please scrap the draft in favor of a plan that would address these issues: :
WATER and CLIMATE. It is clear that the plan's “ecological uplift” does not protect Barton Springs or Barton Creek upstream or downstream of the springs. This should have been THE top consideration for the vison plan as a whole, along with making Zilker Park a centerpiece of implementing Austin's Climate Equity Plan. Protecting the springs, the creek and the climate is completely missing from the draft plan.
PARKING. Zilker Park or Park Zilker? The proposed garages are horribly expensive and climate disasters. Delete all 3 or 4 from the plan and utilize existing area garages and circulators instead.
PRIVATIZATION The proposed management "Conservancy" is a bad answer to chronic underfunding of the Parks Dept. Council should fully fund the Parks Dept. This plan suffers badly from outsized influence by corporate donors and commercial interests. This conservancy would institutionalize that bias and wreck the park for the public even more than they already have. We can’t let that happen.
MOPAC AND SPORTS DON’T MIX Moving organized sports next to MOPAC to preserve the Great Lawn for big events only makes sense for the LiveNation/Ticketmaster monopoly that controls ACL and the Trail of Lights. Disc golf and Frisbee golf users are up in arms about this and rightly so. Saving the Great Lawn for GREAT CORPORATE EVENTS is unacceptable
COSTS. Failure to provide more than vague cost estimates means it is impossible to truly evaluate this plan even on a preliminary basis. Bridges, the land bridge, various developments in the park including garages and a visitor center are all expensive and totally unnecessary. Limited funds should be spent on the immediate priorities of protecting Barton Springs and our climate and providing city dwellers with access to nature.
IMPACT ON OTHER PARKS AND OVERALL EQUITY Failure to include low-cost alternatives and ignore negative implications for funding of other City parks for pools, maintenance, enforcement, basic services, etc. PARD is tragically underfunded. This plan would throw tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars at Zilker Park while other parks have no pools or basic facilities or we "can't afford" to pay lifeguards and other staff to keep our parks and pools open, safe, and an outdoor escape from urban life.
Please put Zilker Park planning back into the hands of the Parks Board and the community. The private park planners delivered a plan for Zilker Park commercial interests and not for the public.