Wainwright Park just got a refresh. The City of El Paso says the park at 4520 Lawrence Avenue now offers more shade, new landscaping and some fun additions to the playground, the result of what officials are calling Phase 2 Improvements.
According to the City of El Paso
, those upgrades were funded through a Community Development Block Grant, a federal program cities use to pay for neighborhood-level projects. The announcement, posted Friday, frames the changes simply: “Wainwright Park is now even better!”
The city's post does not spell out exactly which playground features were added or when construction wrapped up, so residents visiting the park on Lawrence Avenue will want to see the new layout for themselves. What is clear is that the park now has additional shade and landscaping on top of whatever playground elements were part of this latest phase.
A Bumpy Road to Get Here
Getting to this point wasn't entirely smooth. A procurement review led the El Paso City Council to unanimously remove a prior task-order award for the Wainwright Park Phase II project, according to citizenportal.ai. That award, issued to Keystone GC LLC under Solicitation 2023-0397, had been estimated at $721,242.31.
City staff told the council the project was reissued for bid and that CDBG timing affected capacity, per the same report. The outcome of that rebidding process and the project's final cost were not detailed in available city records.
Part of a Broader Shade Push
Wainwright's refresh lands amid a wider effort across Texas to make public parks more livable in the heat. Parks and recreation departments statewide are working to make outdoor spaces more enjoyable, according to Spectrum News, which notes that El Paso has been rolling out new shade canopies citywide using money from a 2022 bond.
Locally, the Parks and Recreation Department has also been installing eight more shade canopies using leftover Phase One bond funding, according to CBS4 Local, with eight parks expected to benefit from that remaining allocation. It is not established whether Wainwright itself was among the parks tied to that particular bond-funded canopy rollout, since its Phase 2 work is described as CDBG-funded.
Wainwright isn't the only El Paso park getting a facelift this year. Westside park debuts new fitness gear at Montoya Heights Park, where new outdoor workout equipment and a rubber safety surface arrived courtesy of the same 2022 voter-approved bond.
For now, the City of El Paso's message to residents is straightforward: head to Lawrence Avenue and check out what's new. Further details on the park's exact features, or on how the earlier procurement dispute was ultimately resolved, have not been made public.
