Don Gallo has been coming to sprawling Cullinan Park off Highway 6 near U.S. 90A to spot gators for decades, well before it became hemmed in by Sugar Land subdivisions.

Though he sees more families on weekends these days, the 65-year-old often has the 755-acre green space largely to himself.

In the 25 years since the city of Houston and the Houston Parks Board purchased the tract, creating the city's fourth-largest park, the site has languished. Far outside Houston city limits next to Sugar Land Regional Airport, the park boasts just one entrance road, some picnic tables, and a few hiking trails to complement the wooden walkways overlooking White Lake, abuzz with dragonflies and coated with lily pads.

"This is a great resource out here, but it has a long way to go before you can really call it a good all-purpose park," said Gallo, who has visited more regularly since moving from Houston to Sugar Land 12 years ago. "It would be nice if somebody would really take this under their wing and really do something with it."

Such a plan now is in the works, as Houston considers transferring responsibility for the park to the city of Sugar Land.

Houston leaders were seeking parkland at a bargain after the 1980s oil bust when they scooped up the huge tract, once the ranch of renowned heart surgeon Denton Cooley, for $6 million, but officials now acknowledge few Houstonians visit the remote site along Oyster Creek.

"Can you imagine what 750 acres fronting on Highway 6 would cost today? It was a terrific opportunity, and we're finally doing what's needed to develop it," Dan Neale, a Houston Parks Board member, said when the site was bought. "Somebody said it's a gem waiting to be polished, and we believe that. This is a way to develop this wonderful resource that otherwise may continue to sort of languish, as it has for all these many years."

Neale, also president of the Cullinan Park Conservancy, helped broker the cities' deal. He, along with others who were part of the park's past, helped form the conservancy four years ago, having tired of seeing the green space fall short of its potential.

Earlier deal quashed

Houston officials have considered leasing or selling the park to Sugar Land before, in the late 1990s. Those plans collapsed, however, amid outrage from environmentalists over Sugar Land's plans to build sports fields and aviation facilities in the park. The rest of the space was purchased with a gift from oil heiress Nina Cullinan, whose wish had been to prohibit development for active recreation such as sports fields.

The cities' current discussions are different, in part because the entire park since has been restricted to passive use as a nature preserve.

Houston voters would need to approve the sale of any park land in a referendum, so the city and its parks board still would own the park, but Houston would let Sugar Land annex it, allowing the southwestern suburb to operate, maintain and police the tract. Neale's conservancy would raise private funds to complete a $10 million master plan to improve it.

Funding for upgrades

Houston and Sugar Land officials hope to iron out an agreement this year, the same timeline Neale is pursuing to raise funds for the first phase of upgrades.

Sugar Land Mayor Jimmy Thompson said the transfer would let his city advertise the improved tract as part of its growing parks system, bringing it more exposure.

"I would say that the usage people are getting is probably minimal at this point," Thompson said. "That's part of the conservancy's issue: They've got a great tract of land, (and) they'd like to see it utilized … We obviously all want it to be successful. It's a beautiful tract."

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said the deal would be a clear "win-win," since the park is used more by Sugar Land residents than Houstonians.

"It stays a park, is still available for everybody to use, but it's so much closer to Sugar Land," Parker said. "It's much easier for them to get their maintenance crews out there, get their police officers out there to monitor it and so forth."

Security also a concern

The remote park's wild state sometimes has created a need for law enforcement.

In the summer of 1998, when a bullet-riddled car was pulled from a lake in the park, it helped solve a gang-related killing.

Last month, a woman was raped in a vehicle at the park, and a city parks employee was hospitalized after he was attacked while intervening. Also in recent weeks, police uncovered $10 million in marijuana growing in a section of the park accessible only by boat.

Thompson said security has been among his main concerns in the discussions.

"Obviously I don't want to be responsible for a piece of land or a park that we don't have the authority for security. By putting it in our city limits, then of course we can police it," he said. "It would be much easier for us to control that environment there."

The discovery of the marijuana farm spurred such quips as, "Well, there's your development money," but Neale said that has had no bearing on the transfer talks.

"It is reflective, though, of the fact that it's a jungle out there," he said. "It's under-utilized at the moment." Gallo said the idea of handing responsibility of the park to Sugar Land makes sense to him. The tract needs more regular cleanups, he said, pointing to a plastic bag of white bread and empty cups and bottles in White Lake.

"I don't see why Houston would want the responsibility of maintaining this park, because there's not that many Houstonians that use it. Sugar Land would probably do a better job of policing this if they had possession of it," Gallo said. "I don't care who owns it as long as it gets taken care of."