A few blocks east of where Forest Hills’ multimillion-dollar homes give way to modest ones—and intersections serve as gateways not to White Rock Lake and the Arboretum but to tire shops and aging apartments—a Far East Dallas community has hitched its dreams to a topographically-challenged 3.7 acres and the greenbelt running nearby.

Almost 35 years after it was first promised, the White Rock Hills Recreation Center is set to open in early 2029 on rugged terrain near the intersection of Ferguson and Highland roads, less than a mile north of Interstate 30. The facility will sit next to two relatively new recreation amenities, White Rock Hills Park and the half-mile spur that connects into the city’s trail network. Still awaiting funding is a loop trail alongside Ash Creek to connect the spur and rec center to nearby St. Francis Park.

Even as residents help shape the rec facility’s design and activities, they are adamant about what must happen next: Leverage this recreation hub into a safe and pedestrian-friendly crossroads surrounded by better housing and retail. 

“We can’t afford to just plop this rec center down on land next to the park and think that’s enough,” says Vikki Martin, executive director of the Ferguson Road Initiative, which partners with more than 40 neighborhoods to advocate for Far East Dallas. “We want to revitalize the neighborhood around this recreation oasis.”

The Ferguson corridor between I-30 and Highland is a glut of apartment complexes, some with decaying wood awnings, boarded-up windows, or partially collapsed fencing. The road is lined with overstuffed auto repair lots, vacant office buildings, and convenience stores, where people who have nowhere else to go wander back and forth. 

Like so many neighborhoods across the city, White Rock Hills is mostly invisible unless you live here. No high-profile attractions entice visitors; usually the only time it makes headlines is when a fatal accident occurs on Ferguson. But tucked away on either side of this main artery are brick ranch houses, most from the late 1950s and 1960s, that attract young newcomers and retain retirees. With Martin’s nonprofit leading the way, these residents have long fought for City Hall’s attention. They’ve notched some impressive wins and shown what’s possible as a result of stubborn perseverance and commitment to their community.

Among those residents is Heather Killebrew, whose home on Ferguson Road is a short walk from the rec center site. She took her teenage daughter and two younger sons to a City Council meeting in 2024 to speak about its importance. “Our children have it just as hard as adults and having somewhere to go that's positive is so needed,” she says today.

Another neighbor, Viviana Amador, has lived and worked for 15 years in a well-maintained 200-unit apartment complex just a few blocks from the recreation area. Her greatest worry is that “in this community of good people, so many get left behind.” She wants to see activities for all ages at the new facility and more traffic-calming measures to make six-lane Ferguson Road safer.

Alyson Black moved into the Claremont Addition with her husband and two children almost three years ago after falling in love with a house on a large creekside lot. “This community is really the last area of affordable real estate when you consider what you get for your money,” she says. 

Now president of her neighborhood association, Black says the rec center, less than a quarter-mile from her home, will be more than a building. “It will add a beacon of hope into a somewhat forgotten but coming-up area of our city.” She also expects the growing recreation area will pressure nearby businesses to clean up their properties. “That intersection near the park colors the whole neighborhood,” Black says.

The first big test of residents’ tenacity was the creation of White Rock Hills Park, which opened in 2021. Led by the Ferguson Road Initiative, residents fought for decades to rid the intersection of an infamous apartment complex where gang members and drug dealers operated unchecked. The park eventually was built on the site of that razed complex. 

Neighbors also persuaded The Loop Dallas to build a short spur running from its Trinity Forest Spine Trail to Highland Road. This connects the White Rock Hills recreation area to the Santa Fe Trail and other portions of The Loop’s eventual 50-mile circuit. At the same time, the city widened sidewalks and added bike lanes to this portion of Highland to meet its “Complete Streets” standards.

Amid these victories, the Ferguson Road Initiative and the rest of the never-give-up crowd persisted on the biggest need—a recreation center, which was the catalyst for the nonprofit’s founding in 1998. Each time they gained traction, a new redistricting map split the Ferguson-Highland area into different City Council districts whose representatives were largely unfamiliar with their needs.

Martin and other area residents I spoke with credited Council members Paula Blackmon, Adam Bazaldua, and Jesse Moreno with being the first elected city officials to consistently care about and work together for their community. “Since those three began getting involved, we feel City Hall is paying attention for the first time,” Martin says. The park and future rec center sit in Moreno’s District 2, but just across Ferguson is Bazaldua’s District 7 and a couple of blocks to the northwest is Blackmon’s District 9. 

Finally, the $18.1 million for rec center funding won approval in the 2024 bond election. Nearly 100 residents gathered in January for the first design charrette with FGMA, the architectural firm selected last fall by the City Council. The Ferguson Road Initiative, which soon after the bond vote surveyed neighbors’ priorities for services and programs, is now assisting FGMA with a similar study.

Dates for the next two charrettes have not been announced, but the goal is to complete the public meetings by the end of spring. Summer will be devoted to design development, with construction documents finalized by year’s end. The city’s timeline calls for construction to begin by August 2027 and the center to open in early 2029. 

Retirees Patricia and Carl Johnson, whose home is about two miles northeast of the rec center location in the White Rock Truett neighborhood, are among the longtimers who often wondered if the facility would ever be built. The Johnsons moved into a brand-new red brick home 35 years ago, and “almost as long as I remember that center was promised to the community,” Patricia says.

With so many area residents 65 and older, Patricia says, the new rec center—if programmed well—can help seniors escape the loneliness so many endure. “They can get out and meet people and go play some canasta or pickleball or gin rummy several times a week,” Patricia says.

The Johnsons know the problems that develop when businesses and landlords aren’t diligent about code and crime issues. Over the last 15 years they’ve participated in the Truett Crime Watch and the Ferguson Road Initiative. They are eager to see whether the facility, trails, and park become magnets for an improving community. 

“We need to make it more inviting for people to move into that area,” Carl says. “Instead of being a dead area going down, that area could be another one of our neighborhoods coming back.”

The 440-unit Estancia Estates, which sprawls over several blocks just north of the rec center location, is emblematic of the complicated challenges this neighborhood faces. Estancia is one of dozens of properties across the Sun Belt whose tenants faced increasingly uninhabitable living conditions as the parent company fell deeper into debt. A court-ordered receiver took charge of Estancia and last summer enlisted Indio Management to oversee the property.

Seth Bame, Indio’s CEO, says his team has implemented 24-7 security and addressed basic needs such as ensuring the 100 occupied apartments have heating, cooling, and running water. Unoccupied units have been boarded up to keep out the squatters who sneaked in before Indio took over. Bame says the company also continues to deal with city code violations as they arise. “We did the triage work; we stopped the bleeding, so to speak,” Bame said. “There’s a long way to go—with so much deferred maintenance and even a couple of fires before we came in.”

Because refurbishing the existing units would be a massive undertaking, Bame says, a better option may be to bulldoze the buildings and rebuild from scratch. He expects a decision on Estancia’s future to come this year.

Ferguson Road Initiative believes the recreation area will entice investors to look at possibilities—whether that’s redevelopment or building anew—for troubled complexes such as Estancia and others south of Highland Road. “This recreation anchor means good developers are going to figure out a way to make deals work here,” says Karl Zavitkovsky, who led the city’s economic development office for more than a decade and now volunteers with the Ferguson Road Initiative. He says the nonprofit’s best path forward is “to bring solid commercial and residential projects to the city and say, ‘OK, you could help us here.’”

“Maybe instead of tire shops, we might have a juice bar or a good coffee shop,” Martin says.

Martin and Zavitkovsky want to find developers interested in building a variety of housing types, especially townhomes, to attract buyers who can’t afford a typical single-family house. “Right now the area is saturated with multi-family,” Martin says. “We want more options than that.”

The two also expect the recently launched Far East Dallas Public Improvement District, which assesses a special tax for a portion of the neighborhood that can be spent on public improvements, to help with funding infrastructure, maintenance, and additional police patrols. “You take projects that are meaningful, and then you layer that public improvement district on top of it, which allows us to generate matching funding,” Zavitkovsky says.

At a Feb. 9 community meeting, Martin updated more than 100 people on every avenue her organization and its partners are taking to improve the area. She paused briefly on successes, but mostly talked about what still needs to be done.

That “to do” list includes finding the remaining $1.5 million needed to fund the Ash Creek pedestrian and cycling path that will connect the Trinity Forest Spine Trail endpoint to St. Francis Park. This pathway, for which County Commissioner Theresa Daniel already secured $1.5 million to design and build, would provide a safe route to the recreation area and nearby schools. Also on the list is persuading the city to purchase a property that would allow the rec center entrance to be on Ferguson Road, rather than the smaller Highland.

Martin closed by reminding the crowd of that day in 2024 when many of them boarded a bus to City Hall to share how much the project meant to them. “We need that energy again so we get all your hopes and dreams about the rec center, your fears and concerns, on the table. This is about you and what you want.”

Having bought my first home in 1983 just across Interstate 30 from the neighborhoods Martin’s nonprofit represents, and having reported on this part of our city in recent years, I know how left behind Far East Dallas residents often feel—and how, against great odds, they have stuck with their fight. Alongside the Ferguson Road Initiative, they are providing a blueprint for others who want to build thriving communities.

“If we get this right, we won’t just be building a facility—we’ll be realizing our vision for a strong and vital Far East Dallas,” Martin says. “This recreation catalyst, complimented by improved housing and economic development, demonstrates what’s possible when you invest in people and places.”

Sharon Grigsby is the co-founder and senior writer of The Lab Report. [email protected].

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