There’s still a touch of early-morning chill when you arrive at Waterloo Park on a Saturday in October. Your first stop, the Moody Amphitheater, is the same venue where you caught a couple new bands back in the spring. You head onto the stage itself, where an instructor welcomes you to a free kickboxing class. Afterward, famished, you meet a friend at the nearby food truck and refuel with tacos while her kids frolic on the nearby play equipment.

Together, you follow the Waller Creek Trail under 12th Street, pausing to watch a dance company rehearse on the Symphony Square stage. Farther south, the aroma of baking bread lures you into Easy Tiger, where you grab pretzels to nosh as you walk to Palm Park. Your friend’s family heads off to a bug-identification class while you follow the trail past the Austin Convention Center and into a lush canopy of trees that filter the glowing afternoon sun. As the creek burbles below, you begin to cross a suspension bridge. Suddenly, a great blue heron rises from the water and flies across your path, so close you can feel a breeze as its wings beat the air. You stop for a moment and watch as it follows the creek toward the delta at Lady Bird Lake—your destination, too, where a friend and coffee await at the Waller Creek Boathouse.

Daylong adventures such as this one are still a few years in the future—but, as the Waller Creek revitalization progresses, they no longer seem impossible to imagine. Little by little, we are getting glimpses of what to expect, such as last fall’s Creek Show, an annual installation of light-based art along the creek that attracted a whopping 50,000 visitors. Waterloo Park, closed since 2011, is expected to reopen the summer of 2020 as a striking venue for live music and a variety of programs like fitness classes, food tastings, and movies.

While the City of Austin first proposed to “preserve, restore, and enhance” Waller Creek in the 1970s, its completion of a flood-control tunnel and its partnership with the nonprofit Waller Creek Conservancy are at last turning the land along the lower creek into one of the nation’s next great urban parks. The ambitious project, slated for completion in 2025, aims both to create an inviting park space and to restore the ecological function of the creek. It’s a radical makeover for a creek that Austin has historically treated as a drainage ditch.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is change that perception, from it being a piece of infrastructure alone,” says Peter Mullan, CEO of the conservancy. “We want to celebrate the ecology and natural aspects of it—and invite people in.”

Waller Creek runs 7 miles from the Highland neighborhood, through the University of Texas campus, to where it empties into Lady Bird Lake near the Mexican-American Cultural Center. The Waller Creek Conservancy’s revitalization spans the last 1.5 miles, from 15th Street to the lake, and is made possible by a massive flood-control tunnel between Waterloo Park and Lady Bird Lake. During heavy rains, the tunnel diverts water from the creek to the lake, preventing the floods that have stalled the area’s development potential. In drier times, a pump system recirculates water from the lake into the creek, allowing aquatic life to flourish.

The tunnel’s protective effect pulls 28 acres of downtown land out of the floodplain, and the city is dedicating $110 million from the anticipated increase in property taxes in the area—a strategy called a tax-increment reinvestment zone—to the park projects, along with $41 million from bonds and other sources. The conservancy is halfway to its goal of raising $100 million in private philanthropy. Together, these efforts will pay for the parks’ $250 million price tag.

In 2011, the conservancy launched an international design competition, and an independent jury chose the winning team of landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. and architects Thomas Phifer & Partners. That team will make over Waterloo and Palm parks and design the new parks that will flank the creek near Eighth Street and at the delta. The trail that connects them is itself a linear park, similar to the High Line in New York City (Mullan was executive vice president of Friends of the High Line before coming to Austin).

The restored Waller Creek is part of a national trend to fold green space into dense urban areas where it’s not possible to add an expansive park like Zilker. “Nationwide, in cities like Austin that are booming, and where land is at such a premium, you’re seeing a lot of creativity in terms of creating open space,” says Colin Wallis, CEO of the Austin Parks Foundation. “The data says that proximity to green space has benefits on your mental health and your physical health, and that people that have access to it live happier, healthier, more productive lives—so when you’re in a constrained area, land-wise, like Austin, you have to get creative.”



One of the many inviting features of the 11-acre Waterloo Park will be a 1.5-mile trail system, providing a natural setting for exercise and casual strolling from one part of downtown to another. The southern entry point’s walkway will be close to the Texas State Capitol.

On a breezy February afternoon, Waterloo Park rumbles with the din of heavy equipment. The park has been closed for eight years for the construction of the tunnel’s intake structure, a process delayed in 2014 when it was discovered that the structure would obstruct one of the protected Capitol View Corridors. The redesigned facility was completed in late 2018, and the pump system is circulating water from the lake back into the creek. “It’s like the headwaters of lower Waller Creek,” Mullan says.

Construction is underway on the park’s signature features: the Moody Amphitheater stage and an expansive lawn where sloping hills will provide seating for an audience of up to 5,000. The partially shaded stage will be open to the public when events are not taking place, and conservancy staff anticipate it being a popular lunch-break destination. Nearby, restrooms, food trucks, and a seating area will be strategically placed by a play area with a slide and wooden climbing structure. “We spent a lot of time thinking about sightlines and how families function,” Mullan says. “This is a place where the whole family can come and sit, have a meal, have a glass of wine, and watch their kids as they explore.”

The 11-acre park will offer a mile and a half of trails, including an

elevated serpentine walkway that serves as a grand entrance from the park’s southwest corner, near the Capitol. It passes between giant heritage oak trees and winds around a small clearing Mullan anticipates will host informal performances: drum circles, buskers, acroyoga.

The opposite corner of the park will hold a small lagoon—a quieter spot away from the park’s programmed activities. Staff from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center designed the plantings for the edges of the wetland, prioritizing native plants that will clean the water and help attract pollinators like butterflies—which in turn will draw birds and other wildlife.

The activity-focused amphitheater and the nature-centric lagoon represent the dual purposes of the Waller Creek revitalization within a single park. “The reason I’ve been excited about this project is that, from the very beginning, there have been two goals,” says Michelle Bertelsen, an ecologist and land steward at the Wildflower Center. “Make it an inviting place for people to get into, and make it as healthy as possible, from an ecological perspective. Those two have been in lockstep the whole time, which is incredibly rare, so it’s a very special project.”

Hike down Waller Creek today, and you might be surprised at the animal life you find. Near the confluence with Lady Bird Lake, fish like American eels, bass, and carp mingle with turtles in the deeper waters. Farther north, smaller fish like cichlids, bluegills, and variable platyfish—a common aquarium fish that has reproduced after being released into the creek—inhabit the shallows. Wood ducks and cattle egrets feed on the plants and insects in the creek, and great blue herons forage for fish.

“Even though the creek isn’t functioning the healthiest way it could, there’s a lot of interesting wildlife already down there,” says Michelle Bright, the conservancy’s capital projects manager and liaison to the environmental committee. But, she says, it’s not an inviting habitat: The water typically has high bacteria counts, and erosion has eaten away at the banks in places like Palm Park, making it hazardous for pedestrians to get near the water.

The changes that will make the creek more accessible for people are the same ones that will help restore the creek’s ecological function. The steep, jagged banks will be shaved back to create a gentle slope, allowing the construction of ADA-accessible paths and creating better visibility between the creek and land nearby. That step will reconnect the creek with its floodplain and nurture the growth of vegetation near the water. The plants will reduce erosion, help water infiltrate the soil, and provide nutrients and habitat for other species.

Ironically, the biggest human intervention of all—the massive concrete tunnel and the pumping system that recirculates water—is what helps foster the natural function of the creek. That system will ensure there’s always water flowing, but it will be designed to circulate fluctuating amounts of water to mimic creek flows in undeveloped areas outside of Austin. The fusing of the organic and the mechanical is what makes Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates principal Gullivar Shepard, the project’s lead planner and designer,” half-jokingly call it a “cyborg creek.”



The Waller Creek Conservancy recently made Symphony Square and the former home of Serranos restaurant its new headquarters. The square has been renovated to accommodate offices and event spaces. During last year’s Creek Show, it served as a hub for the light-themed exhibition.

PHOTO BY LEONID FURMANSKY.

People tend to assume that “nature” exists in pristine places away from the city and human activity, Shepard says, and it’s unusual for a project to successfully integrate nature into a developed, urban environment. “I think the world is hungry for that,” he says. “The idea of having a real, thriving natural system in the middle of a dense city is a rare opportunity and a rare achievement.” Starting next summer, Austinites will have a chance to experience it for themselves.

The traveling exhibition New Monuments for New Cities, a partnership with the High Line and four other urban, linear parks, runs through May at 12th and Red River streets. The curators asked artists “to look at what we’ve memorialized in the past and how we might do that differently in the future,” says Meredith Bossin, the Waller Creek Conservancy’s director of engagement. To accompany the exhibition, the conservancy will host a series of artist talks and films at Symphony Square. The annual Pop-Up Picnic returns to Palm Park on April 6, and the conservancy hosts several creekside concerts throughout the spring.