Pease Park

Plan for Restoration, Management, and Conservation

Austin, Texas

August 23, 2006 

Pease Park, one of Austin’s oldest parks, is being loved to death.  This historic park experiences heavy traffic from neighborhood trail users, disc golf and volleyball players, as well as many dogs and their owners attracted to the leash-free area.  Current usage patterns, exacerbated by Austin’s expanding population, have resulted in significant deterioration and depletion of the landscape. Examples of this can be seen in the growing areas of bare rock and eroded, compacted soils found throughout the park. Lack of adequate soil and groundcover in turn limits the park’s ability to absorb and filter storm water - an important function in a flood-prone watershed like Shoal Creek.  Over-use has also resulted in a number of indirect effects: degraded wildlife habitat, less species diversity, and death or weakening of the park’s mature trees with little natural regeneration of desirable plants to replace them. Besides this dismaying list of human-caused impacts, Pease Park is constantly being altered by natural forces such as scouring floods and periods of drought. These processes cannot be halted, but can only be guided by wise policies.  A sustainable restoration and management plan must be implemented soon to preserve the scenic appeal of this precious slice of woodland in the center city for both today’s park users and those in generations to come. 

To reverse this decline in overall ecological health, the Austin Parks Foundation is proposing an initiative to restore Pease Park by forming a public/private partnership that will maximize city resources, employ professional expertise, and utilize volunteer efforts. This initiative will include the following steps:   

• a complete site analysis fully clarifying the ecological problems at the park, and identifying their underlying causes;
• development of a preliminary site management plan by working with stakeholders from the community and other park users in order to identify strategies where by the underlying causes of decline can be addressed;
• production of a long-term management plan that will provide a deeper understanding of what is required to bring Pease Park back to life;
• accountability and follow through on conservation activities.

 

Ecological Assessment and Site Plan

Much of the highly visible ecological degradation on the site is in fact symptomatic of other underlying ecological and hydrological issues.  Addressing the symptoms without first addressing these underlying causes is prone to failure.  APF will contract with The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center to conduct an ecological analysis of the site in order to identify both the surface problems and the related underlying causes of decline.  This assessment will provide a framework for the planning process in which the park will be studied as a whole natural system, where both natural and human impacts are included. A piece-meal approach to Pease Park would be short-sited and ultimately unsuccessful.  

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is a valuable partner in this process because they are experienced in finding ways to harmonize the activities of humans in the landscape with sustainable management practices.  They have demonstrated this skill not only at their own site, but also through their consulting activities with organizations such as the Village of Wimberley—Blue Hole Park, U.S. Corps of Engineers—Mission Reach of the San Antonio River, Junction Campus of Texas Tech University, City of Austin Water Quality Protection Lands, Denver Botanic Garden at Chatfield and Schulle Canyon Park in San Marcos.  They have experience in site usage, restoration and interpretive master planning, and look forward to using this expertise to ensure that the park can be managed in order to provide for the many needs of the residents of Austin, both now and in the future. 

The Importance of Comprehensive Planning: Involving Stakeholders 

Often the problem that confronts parks and open space staff is not what to do on the site, but finding ways with limited resources to provide everything that has been proposed but will not lead to further deterioration. This is especially true for Pease Park.  The challenge will be to develop a sustainable management and restoration plan that will be compatible with the demands of park users, while also helping to mitigate the detrimental effects of frequent flooding on the park.   A facilitated public stakeholder process will be used to find ways to balance the needs of the park users with the carrying capacity of the park. This process is critical because it not only results in innovative and effective solutions to the underlying issues, but also serves to educate the stakeholders with regard to the realistic potential of the balance between ecological restoration and public usage. This is particularly important given the physical and biological degradation of the site, and the likelihood of increasing disturbance due to high pedestrian traffic. The stakeholder group will explore various options and desires which might be mutually exclusive and find ways to build consensus in a single plan. As part of gathering information for the stakeholder process, APF will perform both intercept surveys of park users as well as observation studies of park usage using the Project for Public Space methodology. Furthermore, it is hoped that the information gained from methodology and process applied to this park can be directly applied to the management and conservation of parks throughout the city.   

We recommend this involved design process as we have seen too many good designs fail because of a lack of community support.  Pease Park is a perfect example of a natural resource where the deterioration is primarily a result of human interaction with the park.  If that interaction is not successfully adjusted, no amount of revegetation efforts, stream-side armoring, or other land management will be successful in reversing the decline in the ecological sustainability of the park. 

Developing a Plan for Management and Conservation 

The Site Assessment and Restoration Management Plan for Pease Park will unfold in two major phases:  Phase I includes: 

• a written report summarizing the ecological hydrological analysis (hydrological analyis to be provided by City of Austin Watershed Protection Division staff) and possible restoration strategies. The site survey will utilize GIS derived maps from PARD that show the planned and on-going trail improvements. This document will provide base information upon which the location of various user activities, as well as natural features and areas of concern can be identified and used in stakeholder discussions and the development of management strategies;
• establishment of demonstration plots in a designated protected area that will also be used to engage public awareness of ecological principles and interventions necessary for a sustainable management of the park. As a very visible “laboratory” of different kinds of methods, visitors could see for themselves the changes between the untreated and treated areas of the park.  The demonstration plots would also give us direct information about cost, time factors, durability, and efficacy of various treatments.  These plots will likely take at least one year to establish post installation before they can be fully evaluated.

 

APF will contract with LBJWC to provide the following as part of Phase I

• A site assessment of Pease Park documenting ecological issues that need to be addressed through the planning process. This will involve working with appropriate professionals (see below) to develop a site plan illustrating the location, approximate size, and design intent of the park elements and overall land use.
• Design and installation oversight of demonstration plots in designated areas to test methods and educate the public.
• Expertise to develop and help implement the goals and objectives for the Pease Park project as directed by the COA and APF.
• Participation in the stakeholders process led by PARD and APF, to understand the opportunities and constraints of the site, ultimately focusing on the desired elements and uses of the park. 

 

Additional Resources Needed 

In addition to the expertise that the Wildflower Center brings to this project, APF will be relying heavily on expertise that the City of Austin already has at its disposal.  This would include engineering hydraulic and hydrodynamic (H&H) models and design involvement from Watershed Protection staff, guidance on acceptable management techniques from PARD, other city departments such as Water Quality and Streets and Bridges, as well as participation in the stakeholder process from a PARD “decision-maker” for the park.