First on the agenda will be a staff request of council to publish a request for proposals, or RFP, for the specific engineering, design and construction of a bridge at Great Divide Drive and Little Barton Creek. Under the staff proposal, council members and staff would begin the process of accepting and reviewing responses to the RFP in June, and council then would award a contract in early August.
The bridge will follow a plan approved by council in March to replace the current low-water crossing with a bridge and pedestrian walkway that can handle water flow rates, measured in cubic feet per second, or cfs, greater than what the current configuration can handle. Today, the low-water crossing at Great Divide is overtopped with water when flow rates in Little Barton Creek exceed 65 cfs, according to city documents.
Council action earlier this year, while not specifying the actual appearance of the bridge, targeted the amount of cfs generated by a 10-year storm as the design standard for the bridge. A 10-year rain storm is a measurement of probability, so such a storm has a 10% chance of occurring in a given year.
In other business, council will revisit roadway plans for Central Park, which were the subject of a council discussion and public hearing May 25. Bee Cave city staff is expected to present a revised roadway plan for the park.
Deciding whether to phase in a system of roads and build out more than 300 parking spots at an estimated cost of more than $3 million is the first of many decisions to come for the city’s master plan that will guide the long-term development of Bee Cave’s 60-acre Central Park, which lies just west of RM 620 and Bee Cave Parkway.
A draft master plan presented to council shows additional future access points to the park, including at Hwy. 71 and RM 620. The idea from city staff is that these access points and accompanying roads running across the park would create greater connectivity to different amenities that would be built in the park over many years. Currently, there is only one entrance to Central Park, and that entrance is at Bee Cave Parkway just west of RM 620.
Staff is expected to present revisions to its roadway plan that address council concern about motorists using park roadways as a shortcut to avoid traffic on nearby highways. Also up for discussion is another look at how road features might slow future traffic down as it moves through Central Park. A proposal to build a roundabout was not met with initial approval from council members at the May 25 meeting.
