Westchase District has broken ground on its largest destination park, playground and entertainment experience, a major step in the District’s efforts to meet the needs of residents and workforce in one of Houston’s most park-deficient areas.
Spanning 3.4 acres on Wilcrest Drive just north of Richmond Avenue, Westchase District’s tree-lined Camden Park will offer a 30,000 square-foot activity lawn with multi-purpose pavilion for free concerts and cultural performances, onsite restaurant open daily with indoor and outdoor seating, sprawling children’s playground with rolling hills, play structures, and water features, and a fenced dog park with turf-covered mounds, tunnels and separate spaces for large and small dogs.
The public WiFi-enabled Camden Park also will feature a covered sky terrace with outdoor seating and sweeping views of the playground, event lawn and pavilion.
The park will offer an outdoor reading room with complimentary books, lush landscaping around the park perimeter, exercise stations, space for food trucks and farmers market vendors and restrooms. A dozen Highrise Live Oaks also will be relocated to the park from medians along Westheimer Road. “This will be a destination park experience unlike any other in west Houston,” says Sherry Fox, vice president of communications for Westchase District. “As a fully programmed setting, Camden Park will offer hundreds of year-round free events, all programmed by Westchase District, focused on fitness, education, arts and culture.”
Roughly 21,000 residents along with nearby employers are located within a 20-minute walk of Camden Park. Westchase District also has entered into shared parking agreements with several adjacent office buildings to provide complimentary parking for park goers during evenings and weekends. A mid-block pedestrian-activated crossing will be added to ensure ease of crossing Wilcrest. Patrons also can use a circular drive for convenient pick up and drop-off. The lighted park will be staffed with onsite guest service attendants and onsite security.
Camden Park’s onsite restaurant, Ginger Kale, will be patterned after a similar concept in Hermann Park. The restaurant will be open daily, 7 a.m. – 7 p.m., for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a menu designed to appeal to those living and working in the nearby area. “Besides providing a convenience for nearby office workers, an onsite restaurant enhances the park experience and keeps families around longer,” adds Fox. “When the kids are fed, everyone is happy.”
Camden Park was named in honor of the park’s primary donor, Camden Property Trust, which owns and manages multifamily apartment communities across the United States. Some of Camden’s first properties were located in Westchase District. Other major supporters include BGE, Inc., CenterPoint Energy, Cullen Foundation, Green Mountain Energy Sun Club, H-E-B, Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc., Park Eight, Perry Homes, Phillips 66, Stedman West Foundation, Sunderland Foundation, Texas Parks & Wildlife, The Brown Foundation and The Elkins Foundation.
The announcement of Camden Park comes a little more than a year after Westchase District opened its first fully programmed park, Woodchase Park. In its first year of operation, Woodchase Park attracted more than 25,000 visitors.
“The demand for green space is there, no question about it,” Fox says, noting Westchase District also offers miles of interconnecting landscaped trails with exercise equipment and public art. 
The land for Camden Park was purchased by the City of Houston in 2016 using open space money set aside by multi-family developers as required by the Parks & Open Space Ordinance. The park is adjacent to Westchase District’s Library Loop Trail and the City of Houston’s Robinson-Westchase Library.
Westchase District will manage the park’s design, construction, programming and maintenance. D.L. Meacham will provide construction services for the $13.7-million project with design services provided by the Office of James Burnett (OJB). Construction is expected to begin in January with completion scheduled for mid to late-2024.
Click to view park groundbreaking photos.
