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During a work session on Tuesday, the majority of McKinney City Council decided on an inverted deck park design, one of three options to create a pedestrian connection across State Highway 5 at Louisiana and Virginia streets.
The project would connect downtown with the city’s historic neighborhoods in East McKinney where development projects like TUPPS brewery and the new City Hall plaza are underway.
“The majority of the council would like to pursue option two,” Mayor Pro Tem Rainey Rogers said after more than an hour of discussion.
The three options — a deck park, an inverted deck park and a crossing at-grade — for a pedestrian connection were presented during the work session where council members were asked for input.
The first option included a deck park that would put Highway 5 underneath a 2-acre open space at-grade with Virginia and Louisiana streets. However, city staff recommended that while the deck park would provide ample green space, it would require considerable property acquisition, reduce east to west mobility and require more money with less funding opportunities.
The deck park would cost $85 to $95 million with annual operations and maintenance costing up to $2.5 million.
“While we have a lot of members of the public say that they love the deck park, they would also say we want to make sure we’re very cost conscious, and those two things don’t align completely,” assistant city manager Kim Flom said during the meeting.
Instead, staff pointed to an inverted deck park, the second option, or the enhanced crossing at-grade option.
The inverted deck park would go underneath the highway. Similar to the deck park, it would cover about 2 acres but only require the acquisition of five properties, compared with the deck park’s 27. The section of the park underneath the highway would be about 90 feet to 125 feet across and 12 feet high with landscaping and a possible water feature, according to a PowerPoint presentation shown during the meeting.
Public feedback — gathered from an online survey which garnered 1,120 responses with more than 70% of the respondents identifying as residents located west of Highway 5 — pointed to concerns with safety, security and the possible nuisance that the inverted park could cause.
Gary Graham, director of engineering with the city, said additional programming and activities would likely need to be planned for the inverted deck park to address concerns of nuisance and safety. Flom added that safety concerns can be alleviated with design principles like lighting, technology and maintenance, but the cost associated with accomplishing those principles as well as bringing programming to the park should be considered.
The inverted deck park would cost $40 million to $45 million with annual operations and maintenance costing up to $2.5 million. However, The North Central Texas Council of Governments has committed up to $30 million for this option.
The crossing at-grade option would bring landscaping up against the road and include stamped concrete on Virginia and Louisiana streets to create the feeling of being in a new location, different from the through moving corridor seen on other sections of Highway 5. This option would cost $3 million with annual operations and maintenance costing $100,000.
While council members agreed the deck park option was too expensive, some pushed back on the inverted deck park option.
“We have bigger problems along this entire corridor that need solutions, and I don’t see this as a solution to any of those problems that we have,” said council member Justin Beller. “I see it as a good development, as it helps downtown and helps the east side, but it’s not environmental justice, it’s not restitching a community.”
He added that the project area is at a busy intersection that might not be the best place to gather, and based on public survey results, people will likely choose to drive in lieu of walking through the park.
“I don’t think it’s the best thing for us to do from an expense standpoint,” Beller said. “I don’t think it solves a problem from a pedestrian standpoint. I think it potentially creates a lot of other new problems, and it delays a lot of the solutions,” Beller said.
Council member Charlie Philips also noted that he doesn’t think pedestrians will walk up and down the stairs to go through the park.
“I’m concerned that they’re going to continue to run across the highway,” Philips said.
Mayor George Fuller said the intent of the deck park has never solely been about solving a pedestrian crossing problem.
“When I look at this project, when I started this five years ago, it was about how can we expand the downtown footprint in a creative way, in a way that wasn’t mitigated by a highway going through the center of it?” Fuller said. “How do we extend our footprint from the square we have now? As you get closer to Highway 5, it’s a different feel from the community. How can we change that? Well we can do a project like this that is transformative.”
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