Austin Parks Board Creates a Zilker Park Stewardship Working Group After ACL Left the Great Lawn in Mud

The Austin Parks and Recreation Board voted Monday evening to create a dedicated working group focused on the stewardship and preservation of Zilker Park, in response to damage caused by this year's Austin City Limits Festival, according to a compilation of the vote reported Tuesday. The item - 'Discussion and create a working group related to the preservation, conservation, restoration and sustainability of Zilker Park' - was sponsored by board members Ted Eubanks of District 10, Kim Taylor of District 8 and Luai Abou Emara of District 6, and was taken up at the board's October 26 meeting at City Hall.

The immediate cause is the state of the Great Lawn. The lawn has been closed since September for festival setup and had not reopened as of the vote, and rain during ACL's first weekend turned much of it into mud. At the time of Monday's vote there was no set date for it to reopen - a separate city announcement since then has set a partial, western-section reopening for Saturday, October 31, after load-out and annual maintenance.

A working group is a narrower tool than a new park plan: it puts a named set of people on one question - here, how a 351-acre park that hosts the city's biggest festival, its spring-fed pool and its everyday neighborhood use gets protected and restored between events - and reports back to the board that created it. Who should have a voice in that process was the question CBS Austin's coverage of the vote put to its audience, and it is the question the board now has to answer as the group is seated.

The questions the group must answer were put to the board the same night. Jeffery Bowen, president of the Austin Neighborhoods Council, asked the board to define what it means by preservation, conservation and restoration - the proposal itself was a one-sentence statement - and to say who will sit in the group and whether residents and park advocates will have a voice in it, CBS Austin reported. Park users feel both sides of the closure: Zilker regular Brandon Hewitt told the station he understands why the lawn has to close, while calling it inconvenient, and ACL's organizers, in a previously issued statement, noted the festival's 25-year partnership with the city, its practice of remediating areas needing repair after every festival, and the millions ACL Fest and the Austin Parks Foundation have invested in the Great Lawn. No membership list, meeting schedule or report date for the working group has been announced.

For Zilker's neighbors and regulars, the stakes are practical: how much of the lawn is open, when, and in what condition, through the Trail of Lights season that follows ACL on the same ground. The board's vote does not itself repair a blade of grass - it creates the body charged with making sure the repair, and the next festival's footprint, are someone specific's job.