Memorial Park

To accelerate implementation of the visionary Memorial Park Master Plan, Kinder Foundation offered a grant of $70 million to Memorial Park Conservancy in April 2018. This grant became the catalyst for a public-private partnership with the City of Houston. The resulting “Ten-Year Plan” provides capital funds for many of the Master Plan signature projects and critical connections along with committed resources for their long-term care.

Photo of the Kinder Land Bridge and the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Prairie, taken May 2023. Photo courtesy of Nick Hubbard/Memorial Park Conservancy.
A runner along the Seymour Liebermann Exercise Trail within the Clay Family Eastern Glades. Photo courtesy of Nick Hubbard/Memorial Park Conservancy.
A cyclist within the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Prairie. Photo courtesy of Nick Hubbard/Memorial Park Conservancy.
Memorial Park's Clay Family Eastern Glades and Hines Lake as seen from above. Photo courtesy of Nick Hubbard/Memorial Park Conservancy.
Taken in Memorial Park on February 10, 2023, this photo features nearly all of the people involved in bringing Memorial Park's 10 Year Plan to life. In the front row middle are Nancy (in green) and Rich Kinder.
The Memorial Groves will serve as a living memorial in the form of a hardwood forest commemorating Camp Logan soldiers and will be an ideal space for field trips, family gatherings and community education.
An April 2025 rendering of Memorial Groves provided by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

To accelerate the visionary Memorial Park Master Plan, Kinder Foundation offered a grant of $70 million to Memorial Park Conservancy in April 2018, then Houston’s largest single parks grant, which served as a catalyst for public-private partnership with the City of Houston. The Kinder Foundation’s grant specified that Memorial Park Conservancy would raise the remaining $55 million of the total $125 million in private funding, with the City committing to a $50 million public dollar investment for infrastructure improvements. It also leveraged the potential for $30 million in federal support.

The foundation’s grant supports connectivity to and within the park including a land bridge and prairie over Memorial Drive; destination projects such as Eastern Glades, Memorial Groves, and Phase 1 of the Sports Complex; and ecological restoration. Other plan additions include a trail/bridge system north over I-10, linking the White Oak Bayou Greenway trail system, and south over Buffalo Bayou (dependent on federal funding); a 1.5-mile accessibility trail through the 600-acre wilderness, and other trails and crossings. See the full Memorial Park Master Plan approved by Houston City Council in 2015.

The Clay Family Eastern Glades opened to critical acclaim in July 2020. In early 2022, Houstonians gathered to celebrate the completion of four spacious Memorial Drive tunnels, which allow 55,000 cars to pass each day below the massive earthen Land Bridge. In February 2023, the iconic Kinder Land Bridge and the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Prairie opened. The nearly 100-acre destination reconnects the north and south halves of the park with safe passage for humans and animals over Memorial Drive and reestablishes native coastal prairie to enable a more resilient ecology and diverse habitat.

In April 2025, Memorial Park Conservancy unveiled plans for Memorial Groves, the latest project envisioned by the Memorial Park Master Plan. Memorial Groves will honor the original vision of the park as a greenspace that pays tribute to Houston’s World War I history, while also adding new recreational amenities and additional parking for everyday park users. Kinder Foundation contributed $10 million toward the $42 million transformative project. Construction is slated to begin in 2026, with a target completion date in 2027.

Information on page is current as of April 2, 2025. Lifetime gift total of $82,345,104 may include other gifts not mentioned in the web copy above.

memorialparkconservancy.org

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