Colleyville Built a Stage and a Sanctuary in the Same Year: Here's the Difference
The local newsletter framed it simply this month: the lawn at Heroes Park is turning into a dance floor. No further explanation needed, because by September 2026 that is just what the space does now. It hosts a headline concert one weekend and a community dance the next, and nobody in Colleyville finds that strange anymore.
That casualness is worth pausing on, because a year ago that lawn barely existed. And a few miles away, behind the Senior Center, the city has spent the same twelve months building something built to do the opposite of hosting anything at all.
Colleyville put real money into two pieces of public land this year. One was designed from the start to be a stage. The other was designed to be quiet. Knowing which is which changes how you plan a Saturday here, and it says something about how this city thinks about growth that a simple parks roundup would miss.
The old Heroes Park sat at 97 Piazza Lane, a modest memorial tucked to the side. The new one sits on the south lawn of City Hall, funded through tax increment financing at roughly $6.4 million, and it opened to the public on June 26 during the city's Stars and Guitars celebration, headlined by country artist and Army Reserve veteran Craig Morgan.
What the money bought is not subtle. There are memorial walls dedicated to the major conflicts American service members have fought in, bronze sculptures representing each military branch from the Randolph Rose Collection, and a central eternal flame. The inaugural class includes 193 honorees, mostly veterans with ties to the community, and the park has room to grow toward 430 spots as more names are added.
Mayor Bobby Lindamood told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram he wanted the park visible the moment people pulled into City Hall, not tucked away, with the phrase "right in their face" doing a lot of work in that quote. He has also talked about how the city used to hold its concerts off to the side, and how this new park finally gives Colleyville an actual stage for them. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Scotty Richardson, who served on the Heroes Park design committee, put it more simply: he loves that the park works as a real community gathering place. That is the tell. Heroes Park was not built primarily as a place to sit quietly. It was built to hold people, in numbers, doing things together, whether that is a Fourth of July concert, a memorial ceremony, or apparently now a dance.
Nine acres behind the Colleyville Senior Center and Recreation Center, next to OC Taylor Elementary and Fire Station 2, the city is building something that could not be more different. City staff call it the Texas Tree Trail, and the plan calls for more than 200 trees across 40-plus varieties along a half-mile path, arranged with enough intention that officials have described it as a tree museum rather than a park.
Phase I went into the ground by early 2026 through an $89,600 contract with Smith Lawn and Tree: 42 large specimens, oaks and magnolias mixed with Texas ash, Montezuma cypress, American elm, pine, and big tooth maple. Phase II followed in April, when the city council approved about $65,146 for 64 more trees, this time flowering varieties like crape myrtle, redbud, desert willow, Texas mountain laurel, mesquite, golden rain tree, and Mexican buckeye. A patio and benches are still planned but not yet built. The existing World War II memorial on the site stays put.
Compare the guest list. Heroes Park drew a country music headliner and a citizen design committee assembled to plan sculptures and an eternal flame. The Tree Trail's biggest public moment so far was a city council vote approving a tree-planting contract. That is not an oversight. It is the point. One project is infrastructure for gathering. The other is infrastructure for walking past a Texas ash on a Tuesday morning and not thinking about much at all.
| Heroes Park | Texas Tree Trail | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | South lawn, City Hall | Behind the Senior/Recreation Center |
| Approximate cost | $6.4 million (TIF-funded) | About $155,000 across Phases I and II |
| Built for | Concerts, ceremonies, community events | Walking, shade, quiet |
| Status as of September 2026 | Open, already hosting events | Phase II trees just planted, benches and patio still ahead |
Neither project makes sense as a stand-in for the other. If you show up at the Tree Trail expecting a concert, you will find trees and a sidewalk. If you go to Heroes Park looking for a slow, solitary walk, you will more likely find a sound check.
Neither of these new spaces exists on an island. The Cotton Belt Trail, which follows the route of a 19th-century rail line, already connects Colleyville to Hurst, North Richland Hills, and Grapevine. Within the city, it links Pleasant Run Soccer Complex, L.D. Lockett Park, and Bransford Park, home to the historic Webb House. A pocket park at Colleyville Boulevard and John McCain Road offers a shaded rest stop with a fountain low enough for dogs to use, one of those small design details that tells you someone who actually walks these trails had input on the plan.
Once construction on Highway 26 wraps, regional trail records show the segments near John McCain and Pool Road are slated to be extended to connect, closing a gap that currently makes for an awkward detour. Until then, the Cotton Belt corridor remains the connective tissue between the quiet trail behind the Senior Center and the louder green space in front of City Hall, even if the two destinations at either end were clearly built with different Saturdays in mind.
If you are deciding which kind of outing fits your weekend, here is what is confirmed right now.
A city usually gets one kind of park in a given budget cycle. Colleyville got two, and they point in opposite directions on purpose. If a Saturday calls for noise, a crowd, and a stage built to hold both, the answer is the south lawn of City Hall. If it calls for shade, a slow half mile, and forty species of tree to notice one at a time, the answer is the quieter nine acres behind the Senior Center. Both are new. Neither is a substitute for the other. Knowing the difference is the closest thing to a local's shortcut this fall.
If you are weighing a move to Colleyville, or already here and curious what a season like this signals about the neighborhoods around it, Trisha Atwood can talk through what is actually changing on the ground, block by block. Let's Connect.
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