Waco council to weigh $167M first phase of downtown overhaul

The council will get a timetable for a long-term redevelopment of the city center from consultant Hunt Development Group and vote to move forward with the first phase as early as next year.

Future phases would bring the investment to $1.8 billion, with features such as a new headquarters for the city and the Waco Independent School District, a relocated Waco Convention Center, a 6,000-seat minor league stadium, a performing arts, a redesign of the river promenade and new structured housing. car park.

Those improvements will occur over 12 to 20 years, with the goal of bringing economic development and creating a hub of community life, City Manager Bradley Ford said.

Incentives from the downtown tax increment financing zone could be combined with private money and grants to build the plan, officials said.

The city council will meet Tuesday at the Bosque Theater at the Waco Convention Center, with a work session at 3 p.m. and a work session at 6 p.m.

Phase 1A of the Hunt plan involves uncovering Barron's Branch, now confined to a 22-foot drainage tunnel between Fourth Street and University Parks Drive.

Hunt proposes restoring the creek to a natural state and surrounding it with walkways and leisure-oriented businesses, as is the case with the San Antonio Riverwalk or Waller Creek in Austin. A new drainage tunnel would be built on the site, removing it from floodplain status and opening up about 19 acres for development.

Historically, the creek has been more of a hindrance than an asset to the city center. The city in the late 1960s channeled the meandering, flood-prone creek and buried it in a metal drainage tunnel as part of a federal urban renewal project.

The city and Waco Independent School District have proposed projects on the adjacent properties over the years, including a failed effort to build a performing arts center in the 1990s. In 2006, a section of the tunnel collapse, followed by two more collapses in the following decade. The city of Waco spent $3.9 million in 2016 to funnel the creek into a 22-foot concrete culvert.

But the new tunnel remains inadequate to keep the creek corridor out of federal floodplain status, said Tom Balk, director of strategic initiatives for the city of Waco.

The first phase of the project would also create a pedestrian plaza along Jefferson Avenue that would connect the Brazos River with St. Francis in Brazos Catholic Church, anchored by a reconstructed version of La Pila, a fountain that served in the disappeared hispanic neighborhood disappeared. Calle Two

In honor of another long-gone neighborhood institution, the plan includes an entertainment venue called “La Mutualista Hall and Dance Floor,” along University Parks Drive.

“There are several layers to this that make sense, and it's exciting for a lot of reasons,” Balk said. “It's not exactly where we would have thought to start, but it has so much cultural fabric that there's been a desire and a desire for years.”

The phase also brings significant new water, wastewater, stormwater and road infrastructure to blocks north of City Hall to support future development. Second and Third streets would extend north through Barron's Branch to build the traditional downtown street network.

In the coming years, work would continue on Phase 1B of the strategic roadmap, including a new office complex around Heritage Square that would replace nearby City Hall and the Waco Independent School District administration building in Fifth Street. The City Hall could be renovated as a museum and shopping complex, according to the plan.

The consolidation of the office was the genesis of the ambitious downtown redevelopment plan, which appeared conceptually in a study presented last year by the Gensler architectural firm. In February, the council chose El Paso-based Hunt Development Group as the lead developer.

Balk said this development will stand out among Texas cities.

“It's definitely unprecedented for Waco,” he said. “It aims to be an emblematic project in the I-35 corridor. We want to really be the heart of Central Texas, and we see this as the kind of project that really plants that flag.”

Hunt's strategic roadmap is based on the Gensler plan, but with some notable departures.

It incorporates Gensler's idea to raze the convention center to make way for a new village green that runs from City Hall to the suspension bridge.

But now, instead of replacing the nearby convention center, the city would build a new convention center on the riverfront at the current Ben E. Keith Warehouse, 320 S. University Parks Drive. The timeline shows the relocation that will occur over the next eight years.

The new location is adjacent to a proposed performing arts center and would help turn Mary Avenue into a walkable corridor, spanning the river at the old Cotton Belt Bridge.

The minor league ballpark has moved closer to the river and Waco Drive at the site of the former Indian Spring Middle School, which is temporarily housing Kendrick Elementary School. City officials said they are in talks with developers about potential expansion teams for Waco, with the goal of bringing in private capital to help build the stadium.

The stadium and associated development around it are expected to be built in the next 10 to 12 years according to the official schedule, but could happen much sooner if the right deal comes through, officials said.

Related development is planned on Waco Drive at the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District and municipal court complex, which would be razed under the plan.