A stretch of pavement that once flooded regularly at the corner of Big Bend and Oxford Boulevards is being reborn as Oxford Bend Park, a new greenspace rising on the former site of a McDonald's restaurant parking lot in Webster Groves. Construction began in fall 2025 and is expected to wrap up later in 2026, transforming a parcel long plagued by runoff from nearby Deer Creek into a landscaped rest stop for trail users.
According to the Webster Groves Parks Recreation Facebook post announcing the project's progress, the park will include a nature exploration and play area, skateable features, a bicycle repair station, a water fountain, recycling receptacles and solar-powered lighting, along with a new pavilion still under construction. The site's history as a paved commercial lot that regularly flooded is well documented by the City of Webster Groves, which notes the vacant lot experienced recurring flooding from Deer Creek before redevelopment began.
Rain gardens engineered into the park's design are meant to help the site soak up stormwater and ease some of that historic flooding, though the park is just one piece of a much larger watershed effort in the area. More than 30 new trees are planned for the grounds, adding shade and root structure to a lot that for years offered neither.
A Missing Link in a 26-Mile Trail Network
Oxford Bend Park is part of the expanding Deer Creek Greenway, and once the broader greenway expansion is complete, cyclists and pedestrians will be able to travel roughly 26 continuous miles of connected trail stretching from Grant's Trail through Brentwood Park, per the city. The park itself is being developed through a partnership between Great Rivers Greenway, Webster Groves and the City of Maplewood, which together are building the park and its one-mile trail segment, though Webster Groves will manage and maintain the finished park going forward, according to DTLS Landscape Architecture, which designed the site alongside M3 Engineering Group.
The firm's design also folds in a Washington University architecture studio class, which collaborated on the layout and prioritized public input on native plantings, shade and nature-based play features. To dampen traffic noise drifting over from Big Bend Boulevard and the nearby Deer Creek Shopping Center, designers built planted earthen mounds around the park's edges and grouped Missouri native plants in blocks, a choice intended to simplify long-term upkeep for city crews.
State Grant Funds Riparian Restoration
The environmental ambitions extend beyond the park's footprint. Webster Groves received a Section 319 grant of more than $385,000 from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources this month to fund riparian corridor restoration, including native replanting at Oxford Bend Park, with the money earmarked for invasive species removal and re-establishing streamside vegetation.
That grant lands amid a string of related municipal projects along the watershed. Great Rivers Greenway and Maplewood are separately pushing a full concrete reconstruction of Greenwood Boulevard through late 2026 to link new trail paths to the River des Peres Greenway, a project that includes phased detours and road rebuilds in the neighboring city.
Part of a Broader Push Along Deer Creek
Webster Groves has also been laying groundwork since May for mini pocket prairies near lower Deer Creek Park, a two-year initiative to clear invasive species such as bush honeysuckle and support native pollinators before wildflower seeding can begin. And this month, contractors started pouring concrete for a new box culvert on North Elm Avenue to expand stormwater capacity for Shady Grove Creek during flash floods, replacing an older corrugated metal pipe that crews removed in July.
The Oxford Bend project follows Hoodline's earlier report on Lorraine Davis Park, a five-acre greenway engineered with bioretention ponds and native flora for Deer Creek stormwater control at the confluence of Shady Creek and Deer Creek. Together, the projects reflect a sustained, multi-site strategy by Webster Groves to address chronic flooding while expanding recreational access along the creek corridor. Whether a single park parcel can meaningfully dent the area's flooding remains an open question for some residents, but the rain gardens, native root structures and earthen mounds built into Oxford Bend Park represent the city's latest engineering answer.
