Updated at 11:15 a.m.: Revised to include comments from Angela Hunt.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings wants a new group with a "single-minded focus" to make a long-awaited park along the Trinity River a reality.

Next week, officials will brief the City Council on a plan to create a "local government corporation" to take on the Trinity River park project. The public-private partnership would be responsible for working out the details of planning and building the new park, which would span 200 acres between the Margaret McDermott Bridge and the Ron Kirk Bridge.

But the move would also mean the park planning would be removed from City Hall. And that's sure to raise some hackles of the mayor's critics who are still smarting from his attempt to hand over Fair Park's operations to a nonprofit.

Rawlings said a local government corporation is needed to take the politics out of the road and keep the park from getting bogged down in bureaucracy.

"You can't build something this big or this quick with that sort of restraint on you," he said. "I'm just very excited about this. We're going to get this park done. We've got the organization in place. Everybody wants the park. Let's just kind of grab each other's arms and let's get it done."

The proposal promises to help make next month a high-water mark in a decades-long debate over what to do with the vast space in the Trinity floodway. In addition to the park proposal, the City Council is primed to vote against the only federally approved option to build a road along the river's east levee. Rawlings is open to killing the road, saying he is tired of the decades-long divide it has created in Dallas politics.

But the park project in a floodway will be complicated. Rawlings said he knows just the man to chair the new group's board and navigate the complexities: Design District developer Mike Ablon.

Ablon, who has sold off his Design District interests, said the undertaking will be "kind of fun" and is important to the city.

"I look at [the Trinity park] as a piece of connective tissue that starts to tie the city back together," Ablon said.

Rawlings said he has two other board nominees in mind — they must be Dallas residents and registered voters — and will announce them soon. The council will have to approve all nominees.

The project already has money to get started. Annette Simmons, the widow of the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, announced last year a contingent gift of $50 million for the Trinity Park Conservancy to design and build the park.

Trinity Park Conservancy interim director Brent Brown said the group stands "ready to work with the community to design and build a great park" as soon as the city decides how to proceed.

Other cities have relied on the local government corporation concept to get things done. Austin, for instance, has one to manage the development of Waller Creek.

Houston relies on the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the equivalent of the Trinity Park Conservancy, to manage the Buffalo Bayou Park in the flood plain. The partnership's president, Anne Olson, said the public-private partnership was important because they "couldn't do what we do without the public sector, and I don't think they could accomplish what they want to accomplish without us."

The project was aided by a $30 million private grant, and the city of Houston also kicks in $2 million a year from downtown tax-increment funds.

Dallas, as the plan has been drafted, currently doesn't commit any money to the local government corporation. But future councils could choose to do so.

The city does have $47 million left from the 1998 bond package for the Trinity project. City officials believe they could use it primarily for flood-control portions of the project if and when the road is nixed.

The local government corporation, as proposed, also wouldn't have the authority to build any highways without the council's approval.

But council member Scott Griggs, whose north Oak Cliff district includes part of the park, said he didn't want to rush into an agreement that further separates the Trinity plan from the public.

Griggs, a vocal opponent of a toll road along the Trinity, withheld his own opinion on the proposal but said he wants the city to host public input meetings before moving forward on the plan.

"It's certainly an idea that needs refinement, and it needs input," Griggs said.

Former City Council member Angela Hunt, a long-time opponent of the toll road, said "there are too many unanswered questions" and potential loopholes in the agreement. And she's not sure whether a local government corporation is the right structure.

"We don't know the answer to that question without a thorough public vetting process," she said.

Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway also said he wants to make sure the Trinity project isn't handed over without proper vetting. But he's not against the limited-government corporation if doing so helps get the long-discussed park completed quickly.

"Hopefully I'll be able to see it come to fruition in my lifetime," Caraway said.