Arthur Storey Park

Arthur Storey Park — a flood control basin that agreed to be a park

Two lakes, a yin-yang tai chi court, a mile-and-three-quarter paved loop and a great many herons, all sitting inside a stormwater detention basin engineered to swallow 1.15 billion gallons when Brays Bayou rises. This is southwest Houston’s clearest demonstration of a single idea: that land bought to hold floodwater should also be usable on the 360 days a year when it isn’t holding any.

Highlights

• The two lakes — not ornamental ponds but excavated compartments of the detention basin, stocked enough for catch-and-release fishing for bass, catfish and sunfish.
• The yin-yang tai chi court — a purpose-built circular court, a direct nod to a park that sits at the edge of Houston’s southwest Asiatown and fills with tai chi practitioners at first light.
• The perimeter loop — a paved circuit of roughly 1.7 miles around the water, flat, well-drained and measured, which is why the local running and walking crowd uses it as a benchmark distance.
• Wading birds at close range — great blue herons, snowy egrets, neotropic cormorants, American coots and several duck species including mallards work the lake margins, unusually approachable for a park hemmed in by freeway and apartment blocks.
• Play and fitness clusters — multiple children’s play areas including a Kid Fit zone, outdoor exercise equipment, basketball courts and softball fields.
• Pavilions and picnic ground — covered shelters and picnic tables sized for the large multi-generational family gatherings that define weekends here.

What’s inside

The park occupies about 175 acres of a 211-acre engineered basin, and the landform tells you what it is: broad terraced bowls dropping away from the parking areas toward the water, with the paved trail running the rim. That shape is not landscaping — it is storage volume. Everything else was fitted into it.

• A paved perimeter trail circling both lakes, with benches and shade at intervals.
• Designated fishing spots along the lake edges under a catch-and-release policy.
• Softball fields and basketball courts on the higher ground.
• An outdoor fitness area and several separate playground clusters, including equipment aimed at older children.
• Covered pavilions with picnic tables, plus restrooms and free surface parking.
• Open terraced meadow between the trail and the water — the part of the park that disappears under water when the basin does its job.

What to do and who it’s for

• Early-morning tai chi and qigong groups — the dedicated court and the surrounding open ground make this one of Houston’s most active outdoor practice sites, especially at sunrise.
• Walkers and runners who want a measured loop — the roughly 1.7-mile paved circuit means you can count laps instead of planning routes.
• Bank anglers — designated spots, catch-and-release, and no boat needed; a Texas fishing licence applies as everywhere in the state.
• Big family gatherings — the pavilion-and-picnic infrastructure is built for groups, and on spring weekends it is fully used.
• Birdwatchers — the lakes pull in wading birds and waterfowl that have nowhere else to go in this densely built corner of the city.
• Kids and teenagers — separate play clusters, the Kid Fit zone, basketball and softball keep different ages from competing for the same equipment.

Getting there and practicalities

The park sits in Greater Sharpstown in southwest Houston, on the edge of the city’s Vietnamese and Chinese commercial district, wedged between the outer beltway and dense apartment neighborhoods. There is no METRORail service anywhere near — the Red, Green and Purple lines all run through the inner city, miles to the northeast — so realistically you arrive by car or by METRO local bus. Entry is free and so is parking, and the lots are large because this is a driving park. The park opens daily at 7 a.m. and closes at dusk, which matters more here than at lit urban parks: there is no evening window in winter. Allow an hour for one lap of the loop with stops, two to three hours for fishing or a picnic. On climate: the terraced bowls are almost entirely open, with young trees rather than a canopy, so from June through September the loop is brutally exposed under highs in the mid-90s Fahrenheit and dew points near 75 — walk it before eight in the morning. Mosquitoes are heavy near standing water at dawn and dusk from April into November, and the lake margins hold fire ant mounds, so stay on the paved surface with small children. One structural caveat: this park’s primary job is to flood. After heavy rain the lower terraces, the fishing edges and parts of the trail go under or turn to deep mud, and they can stay that way for days.

When to visit

Spring is the park’s high season — the grass is green, the pavilions are booked solid on weekends, and migrating waterbirds pass through the lakes — but it is also when the basin is most likely to actually fill during a storm cycle. Summer reduces the park to its dawn and dusk hours; the tai chi crowd at sunrise and the fishing crowd at last light are the only people out, and the middle of the day belongs to the herons. Fall from mid-October is the sweet spot: dry air, comfortable evenings, and the clearest water in the lakes all year. Winter is quiet, brown and surprisingly good for birding, with coots and ducks concentrating on the open water and a short usable day that ends at dusk closing.

Worth knowing

The park is named for Arthur L. Storey, Jr., a civil engineer with degrees from Lamar University in Beaumont and Rice University in Houston, who served as executive director of the Harris County Flood Control District and later led the county’s public infrastructure department. Two things about his tenure show up directly in this landscape. He pushed a pay-as-you-go policy for funding flood control projects rather than debt financing, and he insisted that land bought for flood control should serve more than one purpose — that a hole in the ground built to store water could also hold a playground, a trail and a tai chi court. Arthur Storey Park is the argument in physical form. The Harris County Flood Control District started buying land in the upper Brays Bayou watershed in the mid-1980s for detention, and construction on what became Project Brays began in 1993 at what is now this park — this ground was the first piece of it. The basin here covers 211 acres and holds about 1.15 billion gallons, with the basin project alone estimated at roughly $49 million; the compartments were excavated deliberately so that the finished result could become a recreation area with trails, a pond and playgrounds rather than a fenced pit. Project Brays as a whole was declared complete on May 26, 2022, the largest project in the flood control district’s history: around $480 million, half federal and half county, spanning roughly thirty years of construction and four decades of planning. It widened 21 miles of Brays Bayou, repaired or replaced 32 bridges, and built four detention basins covering about 900 acres that together hold roughly 3.5 billion gallons — enough, engineers projected, to lower flood levels by around two feet and provide 100-year protection along the main stem of the bayou. That history is also the honest warning about the park’s condition. It was designed to be inundated, it has been inundated, and the wear shows in the shoreline erosion and the periodic trail repairs. Houston’s 2024 storms — the derecho of May 16 with winds near 100 mph and Hurricane Beryl on July 8 — hit a park like this differently than they hit an old-growth park: with few mature trees to lose, the damage here was to fencing, shade structures and young plantings rather than to a canopy.

Visitor tips

• Come at sunrise if you want to see what this park actually is. The tai chi court and the loop are busiest and coolest in the first hour after opening at 7 a.m.
• Check rainfall in the Brays Bayou watershed before planning a picnic. The basin fills on purpose, and the lower terraces are the first ground to go.
• Bring sun protection rather than counting on shade. The tree cover here is young and the loop is almost entirely open.

Questions and answers

What are the opening hours? Daily from 7 a.m. until dusk. There is no lit evening use, so winter visits need to be planned around a short day.

How long is the walking loop? Roughly 1.7 miles around the perimeter of the two lakes, paved and flat, which makes it easy to count laps for a set distance.

Can I fish here? Yes, from designated spots along the lakes, under a catch-and-release policy. Bass, catfish and sunfish are the usual catch, and standard Texas licensing rules apply.

Why is there a tai chi court? Because the park sits at the edge of Houston’s southwest Asiatown and was built for the community around it. The circular yin-yang court is purpose-built, and it is used most heavily at sunrise.

Is this really a flood control basin? Yes. It covers 211 acres and holds about 1.15 billion gallons of stormwater, and it was the first construction site of Project Brays, which broke ground here in 1993.

Does the park close when it floods? Sections become unusable rather than the whole park being formally shut. The lower terraces, fishing edges and parts of the trail go underwater or into deep mud after heavy rain and take days to dry.

Is there public transport? No rail. METRORail does not serve this part of southwest Houston; local METRO bus routes and driving are the practical options, and parking on site is free.

What wildlife will I actually see? Great blue herons, snowy egrets, neotropic cormorants, American coots and mallards among other ducks, all concentrated at the lake margins rather than out on the mown ground.