Memorial Park was established in 1924 to honor the 70,000 soldiers who trained at Camp Logan, a U.S. Army facility that occupied the site during World War I. More than a century later, Memorial Park Conservancy will bring that history back to the surface, literally and figuratively, across 100 acres in the heart of the Park, through a project called Memorial Groves.
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The $50.5 million project is the latest major initiative under the Memorial Park Master Plan, made possible through generous philanthropic support. Envisioned by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects and anchored by a new Visitor Center designed by Moody Nolan, Memorial Groves will create a living memorial, a place for reflection, recreation, and discovery that serves everyday park users while honoring the full and complex story of Camp Logan.
A Landscape Rooted in History
The site was chosen specifically because it holds the greatest concentration of archaeological remains from Camp Logan structures within the Park. As visitors move through the groves, they will encounter the unearthed foundations of camp buildings set between two restored native habitats: a protected prairie and a twenty-acre savanna being brought back to life as part of the project.
The memorial itself takes a striking form: nearly 3,000 bald cypress trees planted in a rigorous grid spanning twenty continuous acres on both sides of West Memorial Loop Drive. As the trees grow, their straight columnar trunks will form long cathedral-like corridors, giving visitors a palpable sense of the scale of a camp that once housed 70,000 soldiers. Interpretive signage, exhibits, and markers throughout the landscape will tell the stories of the individuals who trained, worked, and served there, including the 370th Infantry Regiment, the 24th Infantry Regiment, the Cavalry, and the community organizations that supported camp life.
Telios's Role
Telios is providing MEP and technology design engineering across the full project, supporting every structure and outdoor space within Memorial Groves. A project of this scale and distributed nature presents a distinct kind of engineering challenge: rather than systems concentrated in a single building core, power, lighting, and low-voltage infrastructure must reach a wide range of program areas spread across an irregular 100-acre site, each with its own service requirements.
The team has been working through the logic of conduit routing across the site, resolving multiple electrical service locations and navigating the constraints of grade, existing utilities, and the landscape design. Construction is underway, and the team continues to work through conditions as they are uncovered in the field.
When Memorial Groves opens in late 2027, it will give Houston a place to encounter a history that shaped the city and the Park it loves. We are honored to be part of the team building it.
