Location: San Antonio, Texas
Client: Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corporation
The HemisFair Park Area Master Plan establishes a vision for the redevelopment the San Antonio’s Hemisfair Park, a 96-acre site immediately adjacent to downtown and its renowned Riverwalk. Since its use as the site for the 1968 San Antonio World’s Fair, HemisFair Park has sat with unrealized potential for catalyzing new development at the core of America’s seventh largest city. In 2010, the city appointed a special commission to oversee the redevelopment of the HemisFair site that would re-connect it to its surrounding neighborhoods and also attract new residents back to the downtown.
Johnson Fain guided the planning process with substantial participation by residents and other stakeholders from all over the city. More than 750 people participated in a series of three public workshops and numerous smaller group work sessions to define the program for the site and to prepare a strategic framework for its development.
The master plan builds from community-vetted principles to describe an achievable future for the HemisFair Park site and its surroundings. It specifies a plan for land uses, street grid and parcelization, and parks and open space programming, and provides guidelines for design and development of the site. The plan improves the quality and size of the public parks, introduces a mixed use concept to the area, and reconnects the site to the historic neighborhoods it adjoins.