GPS City GuidePhoenixMargaret T. Hance Park

Stop 7 of 39 · Phoenix audio walking tour

Margaret T. Hance Park

Downtown Phoenix · 1992 · Park above Deck Park Tunnel

What you'll hear here: about 90 seconds on Margaret T. Hance Park — how it came to be, who it mattered to, and what to look for while you're standing in front of it.

Beneath your feet runs the Deck Park Tunnel, capped here by Margaret T. Hance Park, a public park in Phoenix. The space is named for Margaret Hance, the city's first female mayor and an advocate for this park, and it opened in 1992, two years after the tunnel was completed. Imagine the sheet of green above a roadway: since 2013 the park has begun to change — the Hance Dog Park opened in October 2013 and is often called the first of the planned improvements.

In 2014 the City of Phoenix announced a bold revitalization to make Hance Park a landmark in the downtown core, likened in ambition to New York's Central Park or Chicago's Millennium Park. Proposals floated then included a skate park, amphitheatre, restaurant, zip-line, splash pad, coffee bar, beer garden, dog park and more. Stand here and feel the layers of city and park: history, civic ambition, and neighborhood life gathered above the tunnel.

Nearby you'll find the Burton Barr Library, the Phoenix Center for the Arts, the Japanese Friendship Garden known as Rohō-en, the Irish Cultural Center and McClellan Library, the Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center, and Kenilworth Elementary School, all part of this neighborhood's reach.

Where it is

Coordinates
33.4616, -112.0758
Area
Downtown Phoenix
Era
1992 · Park above Deck Park Tunnel
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Three stops free. No account needed. The audio plays itself as you walk.