“A place that fits” San Antonio: Civic Park at Hemisfair

Landscape Architecture, Parks and Public Spaces, Planning

Civic Park at Hemisfair aspires to be San Antonio’s new “front porch” and will provide unique programmatic elements and offer new additions to the City’s repertoire of public space. Lush gardens, groves, and water features weave through a celebratory promenade, urban marketplace, and vast urban lawn. Development sites surrounding Civic Park have been land-banked to work symbiotically in the creation of a distinctive public-private partnership development model that will increase land values and fund maintenance of the park in perpetuity.

Civic Park fulfills a dream that began in the early 1960s to build a great park in San Antonio that would attracts local and visitors to enjoy downtown.

Irby Hightower, FAIA

As part of the reconfiguration and redevelopment of the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center, buildings west of the river extension were demolished. The move opened an area of more than 13 acres for redevelopment. Continuing the work of determining the best present-day use for the 1968 World’s Fair Park, the Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corporation (HPARC) identified this zone for Civic Park. Acting on the once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop a prime amenity in the heart of downtown, HPARC engaged Alamo Architects and Gustafson, Guthrie, Nichols (GGN), Seattle, to lead design of the park, and to create a development framework around it.

The project is sited at a critical interface of the future LEED ND (‘Neighborhood Development’) Hemisfair District and greater downtown San Antonio. Civic Park will serve as the focal point of dramatic change in the City’s downtown tourism district. The Park, dedicated in 2023, offers moments of formal elegance alongside slip-your-shoes-off informality. Its unique storytelling character borrows from centuries-deep culture and regional landscape. The Great Lawn, a significant new outdoor venue, is now home to JazzS’Alive, our fall jazz festival. Together with adjacent Yanaguana Gardens and development around The ’68, Civic Park is now an attractive destination for families and friends to spend relaxed time together.