Announcing the MLK Food Park

We are excited to announce the unveiling of plans for the upcoming MLK Food Park!

In 2020, The Real Estate Council (TREC) of Dallas reached out for our help on a kickoff event, celebrating the end of ideation and the beginning of physical transformation in the Forest District neighborhood of South Dallas. To celebrate the work of the Dallas Catalyst Project, TREC wanted to host the neighborhood in a large, outdoor event but was forced to put plans on pause as COVID-19 prevented safe community gathering. Here we are a year later, ready to try again, and examining the ways our project can relaunch bigger, better, and in a way that solves a new set of pandemic challenges in the Forest District neighborhood.

The MLK Food Park will be a colorful and vibrant space very similar to the beloved popup food parks in Austin and Portland. It will be located at 1611 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in the Forest District. Designed by Better Block, the temporary space is intended to address multiple concerns: provide much needed community space for the Forest District neighborhood, create a pop-up "incubator" for South and Southern Dallas culinary entrepreneurs, and serve as a testing ground for Dallas policy change addressing low barrier, mobile food vending options.

The park, which will be tested for one

month, will feature a variety of shipping container storefronts, building facades, food trailers, food trucks, and carts to further the conversation around permitting more affordable, rapidly deployable food vending options in the City of Dallas. For the neighbors, the space will have features as determined by the community via a survey, and a means to safely gather together outside during a time of social distancing.

Open on Friday evenings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons from April 9 - May 2, this park needs community support! Please take a look at the following links and help where possible:

• Community Survey Here

• Volunteer Signups Here

• Vendor Applications Here

If you have any questions, please reach out to the Project Manager, Kristin Leiber at kristin@betterblock.org. We look forward to seeing you there!