Gloria Wallace stood up at a town hall on July 14 and called herself the Farrall Park Cheerleader. She's a Washington School alum, and she'd waited a long time to say what she said next: where there is unity, there is strength. The school she attended in south Shawnee closed for good in 2004. It's been sitting there for more than two decades, a building nobody quite knew what to do with, next to a park that everybody in Dunbar Heights knew needed work.
What Wallace didn't know walking into that meeting is that the timeline for fixing it had just moved up by a year, and not because the city found new tax revenue. A private foundation decided not to wait for the city to find it.
The Plan Nobody Wanted to Explain Out Loud
Here's the part that doesn't make it into a ribbon-cutting photo. Shawnee's park improvements run through a Capital Improvement Plan, and new parks in that plan are contingent on voters renewing a half-cent city sales tax. That's not a hidden detail, it's just not the kind of thing anyone puts on a flyer. Under that plan, Farrall Park's rebuild couldn't have broken ground until the tax cleared another renewal cycle, with completion realistically landing in 2029.
The Avedis Foundation, a Shawnee-based private foundation that's put more than $7 million into the city's parks and public spaces over the years, looked at that math and decided the neighborhood shouldn't have to wait on a vote. At the town hall, Foundation President and CEO Dr. Kathy Laster told the room the board had voted to fully fund a new park at Farrall, no sales tax required, no renewal cycle to sit through.
"We will fund it."
That's the whole mechanism. Not a bond issue, not a grant application working its way through a review board over eighteen months. A foundation with the cash on hand decided the gap between the plan and the need was worth closing itself, and closed it in a single meeting.
The List Behind This One Gift
If this were Avedis's first project in Shawnee, you'd want to know more before believing the timeline. It isn't. The foundation's Farrall Park commitment sits on top of a track record that includes:
- Shawnee Splash, the city's original splash pad project
- Splash pads at Boy Scout Park and Optimist Park
- Airport Trails and Master Trails, part of the city's walking and biking network
- The Woodland Veterans Park Amphitheater
- A remodel of the Expo Conference Center
- A public transit study for the city
- A separate $3.5 million commitment to Shawnee Public Schools
That history matters for one reason: it's why the city's Parks and Recreation department didn't have to negotiate the basics. Director Kerri Foster told attendees the gift lets the city accelerate a project that was already sitting on its long-range priority list, it just moves the calendar instead of the plan.
Two Schools the New Park Has to Answer To
The other thing that separates this from a standard park upgrade is what the site already means to the neighborhood. Farrall Park sits near both the shuttered Washington School and the historic Dunbar School, and Laster was direct about what that requires of the design. The foundation wants input from residents, alumni, and neighbors built into the process, specifically so the park design carries memorials that hold onto what those two schools meant to generations of Dunbar Heights families rather than treating the site as a blank lot.
That's a different design brief than most park rebuilds get. It means the playground equipment and walking paths are only part of what's being decided. The other part, the part still being worked out with the community, is how the park marks the history of a neighborhood that had two schools of its own before either building stopped serving students.
Ward 3 Commissioner Chris Odneal, who represents the area, put the stakes in generational terms at the town hall, calling the investment one that will shape the neighborhood's kids for years to come. Foster closed her presentation the same way, framing the project as something built with Dunbar Heights residents rather than delivered to them.
Then and Now
| Original city timeline | New timeline | |
|---|---|---|
| Funding source | Half-cent sales tax, contingent on voter renewal | Avedis Foundation, fully funded |
| Design and construction lead | City of Shawnee | City of Shawnee, unchanged |
| Realistic completion | 2029 | Early 2028 |
| Community input process | Standard CIP public comment | Town hall input plus ongoing resident and alumni involvement in memorial design |
What Actually Happens Next
A few things are settled and a few aren't, and it's worth being clear about which is which if you live near Farrall Park or in Dunbar Heights more broadly.
Settled: the money exists, the city's Capital Improvement Plan already incorporates the project after commissioners approved it on June 15, and the public target for completion is early 2028. Avedis is the funder, not the builder. The City of Shawnee's Parks and Recreation department is the one leading planning, design, and construction, working with the community rather than handing down finished renderings.
Not yet settled: the specific design. What that means practically is that the input process Laster described, residents, alumni, and neighbors shaping how Washington and Dunbar's histories get memorialized inside the park, is still ahead rather than behind. If you have a stake in how that history gets told, the window to have a say hasn't closed.
For a neighborhood that's watched a school sit empty for more than twenty years, the difference between a plan that waits on a tax vote and a plan that's already funded is not a small one. It's the difference between an idea on a long-range list and a project with a date on it.
South Shawnee has seen this pattern from Avedis before, splash pads, trails, an amphitheater, a school investment, each one a case where the foundation moved before the standard funding cycle would have. Farrall Park is the version of that pattern with the most history attached to it, and the one where the design itself is supposed to carry that history forward instead of paving over it.
If you're already living in Dunbar Heights or south Shawnee and you want to talk through what a project like this can mean for a neighborhood over time, or you're weighing a move to this part of town and want someone who actually follows what's happening on the ground here, the team at Sweeney & Associates is glad to compare notes. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready, no pressure, just a conversation with people who know this corner of Oklahoma because we live in it too.
