Construction on the fifth and final phase of the $43 million project is underway and should be finished in early 2023. When finished, the park will have five man-made ponds with wildlife habitat islands, thousands of new trees, six miles of hiking-biking trails and 200 species of native flowers, grasses and other plants.

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People enjoy Exploration Green, a park created on a former golf course and built in phases, Monday, July 11, 2022, in Clear Lake.

Exploration Green represents the hottest topic in two otherwise unrelated areas: Flood Mitigation and Parks.

“What stands out to me about Exploration Green is the depth of commitment by the community of people of all ages, all professions, all backgrounds and income groups – a real appreciation of what the space can become and making it happen,” says James Vick , the SWA architect and city planner in charge of the park’s master plan. “If you went out like I did and saw kids and parents and grandparents going out and installing trees and planting grasses – the magnitude of what happened is striking.”

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Decades ago, as NASA and the petrochemical industry grew in Clear Lake, Exxon’s real estate division, Friendswood Development, planned neighborhoods around the space industry’s headquarters. It was the first master-planned community in Texas, and homeowners paid a premium for homes on the then-private Clear Lake golf course.

Many were built in the 1960s, and longtime neighbors like Nina Johnston and Ellen King watched each other’s children grow up and start families of their own. As neighborhoods spread all around them, flooding events from tropical storms and hurricanes also increased.

So when the private golf club declined in popularity as golfers gravitated to newer, nicer options, the Clear Lake Golf Club was purchased by a firm that ran it as a public course. Then a new buyer saw it as prime land for more homes, and Johnston, King and their neighbors rallied to block it.

The neighbors formed the Green Space Preservation Committee, and Johnston was its outreach person. With every news story about the golf course and its buyer, Johnston and her friends jumped into action, writing rebuttals from their kitchen tables. To raise money, they hosted hot dog parties, charged $5 per person and made $2,000 from their first event.

However, the Clear Lake Water Authority quickly stepped in, seeing the open land as an ideal option for flood control. Stormwater from 2,000 nearby homes flows into the 200-acre site and the water authority’s president, John Branch, recognized the opportunity.

The water authority hired SWA to compile a master plan and begin hydrology studies. When Vick and Branch took committee members to see Willow Waterhole, a similar project just starting in southwest Houston, the neighbors were sold: Flood control could look a lot better than they ever imagined.

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The project had its detractors, residents who felt their privacy would be invaded or that it would draw too many people too close to their homes. Others worried that the lakes would become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. In time, their concerns were addressed.

Construction on the first phase of Exploration Green began in 2016, and when Hurricane Harvey dumped four feet of rain on the Houston area, the “big digs,” as neighbors called them, proved their worth. Homeowners looked out their back doors at the giant hole in the ground and saw it filled with water – doing its job even before it was finished. About 120 houses that would normally flood remained dry.

Each of the five phases, which includes a pond and a basin, is deep enough to hold 100 million gallons of stormwater – half a billion gallons of water for the full park – which eventually drains into Horsepen Bayou, pressurizing other creeks and bays lit up during heavy rain.

Homes in the neighborhood’s 77062 zip code sold for 24 percent more in 2022 than in 2021, according to data from Alina Rogers of Sparrow Realty.

Willow Waterhole and Exploration Green aren’t the first flood control projects to do double duty as green spaces and parks, but Vick, whose firm works on similar projects around the world, said Houston’s efforts are examples for others.

“One of the first projects SWA did here was the master planning for Clear Lake. It’s fun for us to come back decades later and get involved with Exploration Green,” Vick said of the combination of flood control and parks.

“For this to be a model that can be replicated will be an enormous reward for the community that has put so much heart and soul into it. It is not one-and-done and cannot be done anywhere else. Houston, being the city that it is, we borrow and duplicate,” he continued.

How it is used

In four town hall meetings, each drawing at least 300 residents, it was clear that the people who lived near the park site wanted a lot: hiking trails, resilient plants that could represent the seasons, protection for wildlife and accessibility for all.

King – who will soon turn 80 and has lived here for 50 years – said she’s not much of a walker, but watches the park from her backyard and waves to neighbors as they pass.

“I used to look over a golf course and now I’m looking at a hill. It’s a graduated terrace area — like being in Peru or something,” King chuckled. “I look out and see the water. I tell people, ‘That’s great, I moved to the lakefront property and I don’t have to pack a box.’

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In the spring, habitat islands spring up in the center of each pond, where a variety of birds build nests and raise their young. Around the edges of the lake are wetlands, Mother Nature’s filter that helps purify stormwater before it moves on. None of the ponds are fully stocked, but they all have fish, frogs and toads, probably born from eggs laid by birds or the roots of wetland plantings.

Boy Scout Eagle and Girl Scout Gold Award projects included bat boxes, bluebird boxes and bee stations. There are towers for Chimney windmills that eat mosquitoes and insects during the day, after the bats have finished their night shift.

Trees for Houston hosted 5,000 trees and the Texas Master Naturalist program handles the plant nursery where trees, wetland grasses and other plants are cared for before they are put in place.

Branch noted that while their pre-project planning was extensive, they weren’t afraid to adjust when necessary. “These trails would have been higher up and when we were walking around, we spent all our time looking in people’s backyards – there goes their privacy,” he said. “That’s when we decided to put in levels, and the road 10 feet below grade. Now you look at the pond and it feels more like a nature reserve. We changed the plans as we came up with better ideas.”

When the lake suffered an algal bloom and killed a fish, marine biologists recommended bubblers and aerators to add oxygen to the water.

David Sharp is retired from the chemical industry and volunteers as chairman of the Exploration Green Conservancy, which plans programming, holds fundraisers and mobilizes hundreds of volunteers when it’s time to plant.

They held nature classes for children, including a recent moth event, and had local groups hold fun runs on the trails. Before the pandemic, a yoga studio held free classes here and at Easter a nearby church used the park for a Stations of the Cross event.

Sharp also calls himself a novice bird watcher, rattling off the names of birds he saw one hot summer morning: anhingas, terns, roseate spoonbills and the hungry hawk. Before the park took off, viewers may have spotted 40 common birds. Today, Audubon Society counts have registered more than 140 species, he said.

diane.cowen@chron.com