Santa Fe Trail Corridor

The Santa Fe Trail is currently in place as a 12-foot wide ribbon of concrete, connecting the south end of White Rock Lake Park to the DART station in Deep Ellum but with no amenities or enhancements. The Friends organization desires to have a corridor land use plan, a master plan and set of design guidelines which will serve to preserve the environmental quality of the corridor, encourage consistent, efficient decision-making during the phased development and enhancement of the trail in years to come, recommend redevelopment opportunities and land use transformations within the trail corridor, propose linkages and extensions to connect the Trail to additional key destinations and to attract additional financial resources to the project. To respond to NCTCOG’s 2009 call for Sustainable Projects, GFF Planning assisted the Friends in successfully securing a grant to design the amenities and gateway features for the Trail. Then in late 2012 we prepared a master plan for an approximate 1.5 mile segment of the Santa Fe Trail to serve as an example or prototype for how the entire length of the trail might ultimately develop.