The Canyon in Oak Cliff

GFF’s Planning Studio created the master plan for this 211-acre assembly of land at Westmoreland and Interstate 30, three miles west of Downtown Dallas. The goal was to create a sustainable, mixed use urban village on the site using best practice planning and landscape design principles with an emphasis on environmental conservation and restoration.

The resulting plan envisions a walkable urban community incorporating a generous mix of open space and public infrastructure within a New Urbanist block structure designed to create maximum value for the diverse future development sites. An existing drainageway that bisects the site will become a central amenity with the character of a hill country stream, serving as the primary orienting device for the individual tracts. Conceptual future building pads are positioned to be responsive to existing topographic conditions on the site and to maximize views, with the potential to house as many as 3,500 dwelling units, 300 hotel rooms, 500,000 SF of office and 600,000 SF of retail. The current plan has proven to be easily adaptable for varied uses on the individual tracts as vertical developers interested in purchasing a small piece of the master planned project have worked with GFF to study how their development program could be accommodated on the site.

The project has received several million dollars in funding from the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) to improve access to the tract from Interstate 35, and Mayor Rawlins of Dallas has identified the project as one of his top priorities for Southern Dallas, with funding expected to come from the city’s 2012 Bond Program.

GFF’s Planning Studio approached the project as an environmental effort. The design of the new neighborhood preserves the undulating landscape and uses the site’s natural features as amenities for the development.

Our team emphasized walkability and landscape when planning the development’s streetscapes. Generous allotments of space for both will foster pedestrian activity and community.