Houston philanthropists Nancy & Rich Kinder give $100 million to expand Buffalo Bayou Park eastward

An ambitious plan to expand Buffalo Bayou Park eastward to East End and Fifth Ward neighborhoods gets its official launch Monday with the announcement of a $100 million catalyst gift from the Kinder Foundation. Both the Houston City Council and Harris County Commissioners are expected to sign off on final documents this week. In 2019, Buffalo Bayou Partnership presented a 10-year master plan for Buffalo Bayou East that will create walking and biking trails, parks, ball fields, entertainment venues and even affordable housing for those neighborhoods, extending the Buffalo Bayou Park several miles to the east on land they've been quietly accumulating since 2004.

Funding for the $310 million plan includes the $100 million donation from Nancy and Rich Kinder’s philanthropic foundation, $37 million already raised by the partnership, $83.5 million from the City of Houston, $24 million from Harris County, $14 million in federal housing credits, plus more money still to be raised by the partnership. The Kinders, Buffalo Bayou Partnership officials, Mayor Sylvester Turner, city council member Tarsha Jackson and county commissioners Adrian Garcia and Rodney Ellis will announce the new plan at a Monday press conference at Tony Marron Park. Final approvals from the Harris County Commissioners Court and Houston City Council are expected to come Tuesday and Wednesday. The Kinders, who founded their Kinder Foundation in 1997, have vowed to give 95 percent of their wealth to charitable causes. Rich Kinder, a founder of Kinder Morgan — the largest pipeline company in the U.S. — is No. 128 on the 2021 Forbes 400 list and has a net worth of $7.1 billion. Nancy Kinder said she and Rich took note when the Buffalo Bayou Partnership made public the master plan for this eastern project, but at the time they were in the thick of work on the new tunnels and land bridge at Memorial Park, to which they donated $70 million. When the Kinders donate money to a project, they devote their own time as well as that of their staff, including Guy Hagstette, their senior vice president of parks and civic projects, and Sarah Newbery, their director of parks and greenspace.