How a Houston Park Proved Functionality Can Also Be Beautiful

Why should Hermann and Memorial Parks and Discovery Green have all the fun? The Hill at Sims, which opened this past May, proves that civic infrastructure deserves to feel beautiful, too.

Nestled inside a flood detention basin originally constructed in 2005, the project turns necessary flood mitigation into a 100-acre space where Sunnyside neighbors can walk, picnic, bike, appreciate murals, and observe nature. Even before the park formally opened, residents already used the land for riding horses and ATVs, target practice, and other quintessentially Texas pastimes, many of which continued even during construction. And when the waters begin to rise, Hill at Sims is designed to protect the surrounding residential area from around 325 million gallons of stormwater.

“[It’s] a great example of how we can continue to adapt to a changing climate, but also ensure that the quality of life of urban citizens continues to be really high,” says Justin Schultz, president and CEO of the Houston Parks Board.

But Hill at Sims is not the first local park to pull double duty as a flood detention basin. Willow Waterhole Greenway in Westbury serves a similar mixed purpose, offering recreation options while taking in excess water during major deluge events to spare nearby homes. So does Curtis M. Graves Park in Trinity/Houston Gardens. And the Reverend William and Audrey Lawson Park, which runs along Clear Creek.

With the precedent already set, Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis approached the Parks Board and Harris County Flood Control around 2019 to propose a similar initiative for Sims Bayou. A detention basin already existed in the neighborhood; renovating it into a park would only add beauty and utility for enjoyment during drier times. 

The team surveyed Sunnyside residents and held town halls, with over 700 participants weighing in on what they wanted to see in the new park. “Hill at Sims highlighted both the opportunities and complexities of incorporating recreational amenities within a major flood‑control asset,” a representative from Ellis’s office told Houstonia in an email.

Construction began in 2024, incorporating the neighborhood’s requests for a nature center pavilion at the hilltop, lawn space for public activities, over 4.5 miles of trails, and murals presented by the global initiative Street Art for Mankind, conceived alongside the park itself. Two of these—Salt Marsh and Birth from the Sea—reproduce works by Texas Southern University founding art department chair John Biggers, rendered by Nigerian painter Bimbo Adenugba and Nigerian experimental artist Ade Odunfa, respectively. Others, like Emily Ding’s Impression of Nature and Ana Marietta’s The Heron and the Fish, honor the local ecology found right there at the park. Each emerges almost organically along the trails, occupying their own walls rather than the more traditional, familiar sides of buildings. Amid the greenery, the imagery adds visual interest, art history lessons, and a little love for local flora and fauna to a sunny day outside. “It provides a nice opportunity for surprise as people go through the parks and come upon these really large-scale murals that you don’t normally see in a park,” Schultz says. “It’s just another way to differentiate this park from others, and to provide interesting moments for users of the park.”

However, as a detention basin, these beautiful amenities still carry an overarching pall of ephemerality, or at least more than most places in our demolition-happy clime. After all, it is intended to divert floodwaters away from the Sunnyside community. Everything at the park has been deliberately constructed to be recoverable after withstanding some of the worst known weather conditions. These are bittersweet notions, to be certain, and all worth contemplating as climate change and questions of development continue lingering over the city—specifically, how to bring critical utilities into what is more or less a giant land bowl in the middle of a major metropolitan area.

Much of Hill at Sims’s lighting and emergency towers also run on solar power to ensure functionality, and a nearby new development helps with irrigation. Ellis’s office refers to the entire process of planning, designing, and eventually constructing the park as an example of how “recreation must adapt to flood‑control realities” in Houston. Even new local playground projects now include measures meant to withstand climate change.

Though developers say reimagining critical flood infrastructure as public greenspaces may not be possible in every circumstance, the Hill at Sims offered crucial lessons for approaching similar projects in the future. It’s possible for the functional to also be beautiful.

“We hope that it continues to be replicated in other places, both around the county, but also around the country and internationally,” Schultz says.

Editor’s Note: Date of construction was updated to 2024.