Holiday on Forest Moves Into the Park Built on Its Old Parking Lot

In December 2024, the Lake Highlands Public Improvement District held its Holiday on Forest celebration in the Forest-Audelia shopping center. That year's program included Santa, a reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, a bounce house, face painting and Dallas Police officers handing out free children's winter coats, as the Lake Highlands Advocate reported.

This year the event is listed for Saturday, Dec. 12, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Forest Audelia Park, 9759 Forest Lane. The park opened this spring on the abandoned parking lot of that same former shopping center. The celebration kept its spot. The ground underneath it changed from asphalt to grass.

That move says a lot about how the holidays work in Lake Highlands. Most of the season here is put on by neighborhood organizations, not the city. They hold events wherever there's room: a grocery-anchored parking lot on Skillman, a stretch of Lake Highlands Town Center, the 400 block of Parkhurst Drive. Forest Audelia Park is the first of those spaces built on purpose to hold a crowd.

How a parking lot became a park

The Forest and Audelia corner has been on the city's list for a long time. Community Impact traced the project back to at least 2006, when bond money was set aside for recreation in north Lake Highlands. About a decade ago, Dallas Park and Recreation teamed up with the Police Athletic League to open a boxing gym inside the strip mall at Forest Lane and Audelia Road. The Advocate has called that gym "a big hit," popular with students and with the police officers who mentored them, and says its success is why the effort grew into a plan to revitalize the whole center.

The whole Forest-Audelia project was budgeted at $7.55 million, and that figure covers more than the park. According to Community Impact, $5.55 million comes from the Skillman Corridor TIF. The rest comes from 2017 bond funds and the city's ARPA Neighborhood Revitalization program.

The park itself is one acre. Dallas City Wire reported that staff from the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department's Facilities Services Division built all of it in-house. They removed the asphalt, then added landscaping, playground equipment, walking trails and benches. Its Dallas Parks facility page lists:

• Playground
• Sprayground
• Shaded areas
• Picnic tables and benches
• Parking

The ribbon cutting was Thursday, April 2, with District 10 Council Member Kathy Stewart and District 10 Park Board member Scott Goldstein. City Wire also named the neighborhood partners: Vicky Taylor of the North Lake Highlands PID, Allison Griffin of the Lake Highlands Improvement District Corporation and Susan Morgan of the Skillman Corridor TIF District.

The park is only phase one. Next comes a multipurpose community center. Plans for the indoor space have included a cultural center, a recreation center, a library, a police station and a boxing gym. In March, the Advocate wrote that work on the community center "will begin soon." Anyone at the Dec. 12 event will be standing next to whatever that next phase becomes.

The PID calendar, start to finish

The shared 2026 calendar from the Lake Highlands PID and the North Lake Highlands PID lists three holiday events from Halloween through mid-December, and Holiday on Forest is one of them. The Advocate described the 2024 edition as "going into its third year," so 2026 is the fifth year if it has run every year. LHPID's listing for last year's event put it on Dec. 13, 2025, at "Forest/Audelia." The district hasn't published this year's program yet. Plan on the location and time, and wait for details on the giveaways.

The PID season starts on Halloween. Trunk Or Treat runs Saturday, Oct. 31, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Lake Highlands Village Shopping Center parking lot at 8676 Skillman St. LHPID describes it as a drive- or walk-through way for neighborhood families to trick-or-treat safely. In past years it started in the evening; the Advocate's 2025 listing ran from 5:30 to 7 p.m. This year's 2 p.m. start leaves the evening free for trick-or-treating on your own street.

The middle event is Hope for the Holidays on Saturday, Dec. 5, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The district describes it as a partnership with neighborhood groups that provides meals and presents to neighbors who need extra support over the holidays. The location is still listed as TBD.

Six weeks, three organizers

The PID covers the corridors. Two other groups fill in the rest of the calendar. The Lake Highlands Junior Women's League runs the season's biggest single night, and the Old Lake Highlands Neighborhood Association runs events on its own streets.

Light Up the Highlands is free and falls on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It has a Christmas tree countdown, local performances, pictures with Santa, a Christmas market, a snow luge, a bounce house, a 360 photo booth and a hot chocolate station. The league says the event is stroller and wheelchair accessible. It's also a food drive. The league is partnering with NorthPark Presbyterian Church's Reverse Food Truck and asks guests to bring non-perishable food for the Vickery Meadow Food Pantry. A bag of canned goods by the front door the night before will save you from remembering it at 3:45.

The Old Lake Highlands events are smaller and happen on residential streets. The association's calendar puts the Jingle & Mingle on the 400 block of Parkhurst Drive. The garden workday the Saturday before Thanksgiving is at the corner of Parkhurst and Waterview Road. Judging for the decoration contest starts the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 8, so anyone entering should have their lights finished by the Jingle & Mingle weekend.

Planning around Dec. 5

Dec. 5 is the one crowded day on the calendar. Hope for the Holidays runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the Jingle & Mingle starts on Parkhurst at noon and runs until 3. Until the PID names a location for Hope for the Holidays, nobody can say how far apart the two are. You can still decide now that the Jingle & Mingle's later hours make it the easier one to reach second.

No other date has two events on it. The Oct. 31 start comes first, and the Chili Cook-Off and garden workday take two November weekends. Light Up the Highlands has the Sunday after Thanksgiving to itself, and Holiday on Forest closes things out on Dec. 12. That's six weeks with something to do most weekends, and every event is free.

Holiday on Forest is worth a visit for its new setting alone. If you went to the event in past years, you remember it in the shopping center. On Dec. 12 it will be in a park with a sprayground, shade and walking paths. The north end of Lake Highlands has waited for that park since at least 2006, and the indoor center planned next door is still to come.

Summer Graham and the team at Graham Group love seeing neighbors from Skillman to Forest Lane show up for each other this time of year, and we hope to see you at a few of these. If the new park has you wondering what's changing on your own corner of Lake Highlands, we're always glad to talk it through over hot chocolate. And when you're ready, start your home story with us with a free home valuation.