Here comes "Klyde Warren 2.0."

That's what Mayor Mike Rawlings calls the deck park's long-talked about expansion, to be officially announced at a news conference Friday. The park's new president Kit Sawers says it "completes the park." And Jody Grant, the man who helped create this place — on a highway overpass, out of thin air — sees it as "an opportunity to do more, to do something good for Dallas."

The central feature of the planned 1.2-acre, $76 million expansion is a two-story, 16,000- to 20,000-square-foot pavilion planned for the blank space between North St. Paul and North Akard streets, in front of Hunt Consolidated headquarters. But the new development will also mean some added park space and parking.

"What this means to the citizens is, we're not going to stop with Klyde Warren Park as it is," Rawlings said in an interview this week. "We will continue to make it a living place that grows with our needs.

"It has worked really well so far."

Eyes on the future

The park, which its leaders say draws some 100,000 guests a month, has worked so well that VisitDallas targeted it as the site for its visitor center, which is currently in the Old Red Courthouse. The existing site, said Phillip Jones, the convention and visitors bureau's CEO, is too small, outdated and "nothing appropriate for a destination like Dallas."

VisitDallas, which is behind the "B_G" campaign, had already been eyeing space elsewhere and was close to settling on a different West End spot until Jones spotted a 2016 rendering of a possible pavilion in a local architecture magazine. Jones then called Grant to figure out a way to make the conceptual a reality.

"That started a whole series of discussions," Grant said, "which have brought us from being dead in the water to where we are today."

Grant had already looked toward an expansion even before the $110 million, 5.2-acre park opened in October 2012. Three years ago, he began meeting behind closed doors with the likes of oil executive Ray Hunt, real estate developer Ross Perot Jr. and the mayor about how to expand toward the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Renderings show the planned expansion of Klyde Warren Park in Dallas. The expansion will include a pavilion containing a visitors center and a parking garage. (M2 Studio/Klyde Warren Park)

In August 2016, the public finally got its first look at the renderings for what park officials wanted — mainly, lots of things with "Sky" in the title. Among the items on the wish list were the cantilevered "Sky Deck" hanging off Akard, and the "Sky Bridge" proposed to link the park to the Arts District in the east and the Perot to the west. They also proposed a "Sky Park" hovering in front of Hunt's building, which was then a 70-to-90-space parking garage dressed up with park offices and a restaurant-bar.

In August 2016 Grant went to City Hall to ask the Park and Recreation Board for $40 million in upcoming 2017 bond dollars to fund those add-ons and more, estimated at the time to run upwards of $90 million. The board gave Grant a warm welcome, but he wound up getting the cold shoulder: Klyde Warren Park's ask initially went unanswered.

The Park and Recreation Department already had a mountain of needs that built up since the last parks bond measure in 2006. Klyde Warren was considered a finished-out park — one of the city's best and most beloved. Much higher on the park department's list were items such as rec centers, building out the city's trail system and long-promised downtown parks and neighborhood water parks.

But the parks proposition kept growing. And in August 2017, the City Council stuffed into the bond package $10 million for Klyde Warren after a late push from the mayor and council member Philip Kingston, whose district includes the park.

"Everybody has a plan now we're aligned behind," Rawlings said this week, "and VisitDallas has been looking for a location and has committed to it."

Complicated funding

The pavilion, which the park will manage, will serve several functions. On the first floor, VisitDallas plans to build out a 10,000-square-foot visitor center — or an "experience center" — using high tech to sell the city, Jones. The second floor will contain an event space roughly the same size, which the park will rent out for meetings, weddings — anything that can help the park create revenue to expand its programming.

Currently, the park's ongoing maintenance and operations are subsidized by an assessment on surrounding businesses. Klyde Warren incurred $757,351 in expenses in 2016, which was offset by $787,113 in revenue from the assessments, according to the public improvement district's annual financial report.

On top will be a rooftop terrace; below, a parking garage.

The expansion also includes a small addition of green space: a new overhang off Akard facing west that was referred to in earlier expansion plans as "Sky Deck."

1 / 2This used to be called "Sky Deck." The merry-go-round is optional.(M2 Studio/Klyde Warren Park) 2 / 2Note the elevated walkway from the park deck extension to the new pavilion.(M2 Studio/Klyde Warren Park)

Grant said the addition's funding will be complicated.

Pending a vote in coming weeks, the North Central Texas Council of Governments' Regional Transportation Council is expected to pick up $30 million of the tab, Grant said. One-third of that cost will fill in a gap that will eventually be repaid to the RTC with $5 million in tax increment financing dollars — generated by new development in the area — and another $5 million donated from the private Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation. The $10 million that Klyde Warren Park received in the city's 2017 bond package will also go toward construction costs.

Grant said a private donor has also committed $20 million. Yet-to-be-raised private funding will have to cover the remaining $16 million.

Construction could begin by 2019, and is expected to take three years.

The convention and visitors bureau will fund the first-floor build-out, for which a cost has not yet been set. But during an interview Wednesday, Jones spoke of using virtual reality and artificial intelligence to "tell the true story of Dallas today" — to planners considering holding meetings and convention here, and to the tourists and locals who have turned the park into the city's front yard and town square. The center will also sell tickets to local events, especially those in the nearby Arts District and American Airlines Center.

This is what Woodall Rodgers looked like in 1972, when Billy Graham had his Explo '72 in Dallas and Kris Kristofferson and others headlined a giant concert where the freeway ended up going. (Tom Dillard / Staff Photographer)

That effort will be led by Renee McKenney, hired away as one of the Walt Disney Company's national sales directors in the fall of 2016 to serve as VisitDallas' first-ever "chief experience officer."

Jones said VisitDallas entertains some 1,500 meeting and convention planners annually, and the new center will serve as their first stop.

"At Klyde Warren Park, there's a tremendous amount of energy we want to capitalize on," Jones said. "Visitors want to go where the locals go. It's a local hot spot, our town square, and it lends itself to giving us more credibility when bringing planners and organizers in, so they can see and get a feel for what's happening in our city. Klyde Warren Park checks all the boxes."

Shelved plans

This planned expansion, though, isn't the complete build-out Grant has long envisioned. For instance, he won't get the "Sky Bridge" to the Perot or an elevated walkway to the Arts District, which is undergoing its own master-planning process at the moment. Those plans remain, for now, inside a binder at the offices of HKS Architects, which was brought in three years ago to design a long-range master plan for the park. The pavilion was instead designed by Gensler, hired at the suggestion of Ray Hunt.

The mayor said fixing the pedestrian problem between the park and the Perot is "the most challenging issue" down there, one that will involve the city's transportation planners.

1 / 2The pavilion and deck will fill in some of the blank spaces as the park marches west toward the Perot Museum.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 2 / 2The Klyde Warren Park (right) is expanding one block to the west of St. Paul St. to accommodate some parking and a pavilion in downtown Dallas. This overhead view shows the current opening with traffic flowing on Woodall Rodgers Freeway between Akard St. (left) and St. Paul St, Thursday, October 18, 2018. The central feature of the planned 1.2-acre, $76 million expansion is a two-story, 16,000- to 20,000-square-foot pavilion. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News)(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Even without the pedestrian walkways, Grant said he's pleased with everything about Klyde Warren Park, which inspired officials to dream up plans for deck parks in other places such as Oak Cliff, the Cedars and Plano.

"I am wonderfully happy, thrilled," Grant said. "But I think there's an opportunity to do more, to do something good for Dallas."