City waiting on Corps of Engineers permit

The Grand Park project to create a 350-acre centrally located regional park in Frisco is still in the works.

The planning and permitting process has been ongoing since shortly after the city purchased the land in 2006, but a slowdown in the economy combined with a revision process in 2011 pushed the construction timeline back.

The main issue now preventing the city from breaking ground is the lack of a 404 Permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The permit is necessary because the park plan involves a lake feature that would connect with Stewart Creek, said Rick Wieland, Parks and Recreation director.

"I think at the end of the day it's going to be a better park because of the lengthy process," Wieland said.

Wieland and Deputy City Manager Henry Hill said they are hesitant to set a timeline and expectations for moving forward with the project because they said they simply don't know how long it will take to work through the permit process.

Hill said city officials hope to have the permit within a year, but there are no guarantees.

Stewart Creek challenges

Stewart Creek does not belong to Frisco. It is a natural creek channel and is overseen by the Corps. The creek flows into Lake Lewisville, which is owned by the city of Dallas, said Mike G'feller, Parks and Recreation board chairman.

G'feller said water rights and how and where water flows, as well as the effect on the environment are complicated issues. "If it was up to anybody on the council or in the city, we would have built [the park] already," G'feller said. "There are a lot of variables. We probably wouldn't have a problem with just putting in a lake [without it including Stewart Creek]. The challenge is we want to build a lake in the middle of a creek channel."

Hill said there are also concerns with Stewart Creek related to Exide Technologies, the former lead acid battery recycling complex that sits just across the railroad tracks east of Grand Park. Slag and battery case fragments have been found in the creek.

The city is working with the Corps as well as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Environmental Protection Agency on Exide-related issues, Hill said.

A long road

Grand Park was never intended to be built quickly, Hill said. It was conceived to be a central area in the city—one that would tie together other areas of the community. City officials visited a number of popular large city parks throughout the state and the nation to get ideas and a sense of how visitors responded to the parks.

"The idea is that this would be the type of park that 100 years from now citizens of Frisco would [still] enjoy," Hill said. "It would have a sense of history associated with it, and it would be something that would be a recognizable feature of the community that Frisco would, in some respects, be known for. The idea is not just to build it all at once but to have things evolve over time to meet the needs of the community."

The project has undergone two master-planning processes—the first in 2008 and the second in 2011.

The amenities included in the 2008 plan were a lake, a large space for public gatherings and some specialty areas and activities such as a train or trolley, Hill said. The plans also called for the preservation of natural space and an area for a visitor center and other attractions.

Also central to the park was the concept of having a mixed-use development on the opposite side of the lake, which would hopefully serve to offset the operational and maintenance costs of the park, Hill said.

The plan is to eventually have a bridge or means or getting from side of the lake to the other.

However, as the Grand Park project was gaining momentum in 2008, several things happened to slow it.

"You had the economic circumstances start to fall off," Hill said. "Because we wanted to make sure the commercial development was timed well with the rest of the park, we became a little bit concerned because commercial activity started to slack off a bit. Then also, in talking to various potential users on the commercial side, they had a number of questions and ideas that they offered having to do with their [proximity and access] to the water and being closer to the water in terms of development."

In 2011 with the economy on the rise, the city again began taking a look at the park concept, and focused on better defining the children's area as one of the initial key attractions of the park.

"If you start back on the original concept [of 2008], it was good, but the revised is better—whether it's dealing with the impacts on the creek or just better situating the properties and the utilization of the properties, and better defining the elements," Wieland said. "So, while it has taken longer, it is actually a better project today than it might have been if we had gone with the original concept."