South Dallas resident and leader sheds light on community
Jason Brown, CEO of Dallas City Homes
Jason Brown, South Dallas resident and community leader was featured in recently written article The Changing Face of Fair Park and South Dallas. The article highlights historic challenges that the South Dallas community faced and how changes will impact the area.
“For years, you’ve heard the talk, and finally, you’re starting to see something,” Brown says. “I’m talking about folks who grew up in the area who knew what it was when we had four or five grocery stores—and this was not that long ago.”
He says that’s the legacy of South Dallas that he wants to make sure people outside the community understands.
“We had all of that, good, bad, and indifferent,” he says. “But through the years and all these systemic policies, this is what’s left of it now. How do we shape and imagine what it looks like over the next 50 years? The park is a catalyst, the project to help those stories get told. The community deserves to have amenities. And for the city and the region, the park deserves to be preserved. So how can we be that vision? How can we show people how to do it right?”
Brown says that all the large projects in the area hew closely to that philosophy, including the Forest Theater plans from Forest Forward, a new Park South YMCA, and the pedestrian-minded improvements along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
He says the plans for Fair Park are designed to make the place a regional destination, but it more importantly needs to be an amenity for its neighbors.
“And it just so happens that this is an area where so many homes were lost, where that generational wealth was robbed,” he says. “So this park is for the community. We can’t go back and correct it, but we can make sure the stories remain part of the legacy and the history of Fair Park.”
