A Newsletter From the Free Zilker Coalition
– March 2024

Thank you for caring about Austin’s parks and public spaces! This newsletter is a bit longer than usual. We are trying to give y’all the depth and breadth of our work in the past months since the Zilker Park Vision Plan was vanquished. Be sure to click the links to read the whole articles!

Forward!

Howdy, my name is Cedar Stevens, and I am the current chair of the Free Zilker Coalition (FZ). I want to tell you a little bit about the group and how it works.

We came together when Teri Adams of the Zilker Vision Plan Study Group started ringing alarms about the Zilker Park Vision Plan (ZPVP). She and Scott Cobb set up a little table in front of Barton Springs pool with a copy of the dense plan and organized study groups to figure out just what was being planned.

A number of neighborhood and environmental groups were simultaneously working to amend or, if necessary, scrap it altogether. Teri’s group started a petition, which most if not all of y’all signed. This was a very powerful action and educational instrument; it ultimately rose to over 7,000 signatures! While we were accused of “spreading misinformation,” Austinites were overwhelmingly opposed to the huge construction projects and private control that the ZPVP proposed. On August 7, 2023, the Mayor, three City Council members and the City Manager scrapped the plan. Against all odds, WE WON!

We all viewed this as a battle won, not the war. Another version of the ZPVP could re-emerge (and Parks Director Kimberly McNeely has been rumored to have said this) and although we love Zilker, almost all of us involved also have other favorite parks around town that may face the same encroachments, and some parks have completely been lost to the “Private-Public-Partnerships” that remove our precious parks from the public sphere. Pease Park, Waterloo Park and Palm Park are examples of this.

The “Public-Private-Partnership” alignments that began when Sarah Hensley was the director of PARD and that hatched the ZPVP, also remain. Powerful, prestigious nonprofits like The Trail Conservancy (TCC) and Austin Parks Foundation are at work with the city and development interests in non-transparent ways, wielding millions of dollars and control in our parks. The city’s staff, boards and commissions are seeded and infiltrated by these “nonprofiteers” to influence the process at every level.

Nor were the failures of stewardship for Zilker solved. We still don’t have the Zilker Zephyr mini-train back, the concession stand is still closed, the remodel of the bathhouse is a catastrophe abhorred by many women swimmers and the Great Lawn is closed off to the public during much of the year, badly battered by ACL and the Trail of Lights.

So, we began organizing ourselves for the long haul. Free Zilker is currently organized as a hybrid coalition and stand-alone group, with voting reps from about five groups, and voting reps from functioning teams within FZ. It’s an odd way of organizing, but the intention is to give stability to the group while allowing for a nimble response to fast-developing issues.

Thanks so much for joining the fight and please read more about what we have to got up to!

—Cedar Stevens, Chair of The Free Zilker Coalition