New park in the north central area (Center, Salado: houses, neighborhoods)

[OzzyRules]

I just read in a local magazine about a possible Voelcker park, which would be located near Wurzbach Parkway and NW Military. Supposedly it's one of the largest undeveloped areas still left in the city.

[banker]

Originally Posted by OzzyRules

I just read in a local magazine about a possible Voelcker park, which would be located near Wurzbach Parkway and NW Military. Supposedly it's one of the largest undeveloped areas still left in the city.

The city has already purchased the property. It is 400 acres. The park will be both on the North and South side of Wurzbach Parkway between Blanco Road to the East and Northwest Military on the West. It will have hiking trails, athletic fields, picnic areas, etc. This is great for North Central SA. My neighborhood - Churchill Forest - backs up to the park/Salado Creek. Those that live around this property will get a boost in their property value once the development is complete. This was a great move on the city's part.

[Insomniac]

Image posted by the Express-News 14 months ago detailing the park land as well as the land purchased by KB. FYI, KB sold 17 acres of the 151 they bought to a local developer who will build the Alon Towne Center on said 17-acres.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/D_IMAGE.10c152b4e38.93.88.fa.d0.460b8a8.gif (broken link)


Mapquest aerial of the land in question:

[oldmanshirt]

It sure looks weird how Wurzbach Pkwy. just abruptly ends. You can see the right of way where the last section will go. Maybe one of these days...

On the topic of Volecker Park; I feel this will make that area an even nicer place to live than it already is. Rather than being another characterless subdivision, this area will become a place for the community to get together. I'm glad the city is doing the right thing

[Steel Man]

That's good that the city is making room for more parks. Now, if only Bexar County would do the same in the outlying areas before it is all gobbled up for houses/stores.

[Bo]

I just noticed that some videos of one of the Voelcker Park planning session have been posted online this week. It may not be the most scintillating viewing, but it does provide an idea of how open-ended the idea-gathering process was at the meeting.

Voelcker Park Meeting (12-12-2007) part 1 - AOL Video (broken link)

[GWhopper]

They have already started to do some development of the park area. They had an informal "open house" a little while ago. There was an article in the Express-News that said the city was bummed because only 75 people showed up. Personally, I live right by that area and didn't know about the "open house", so I think this was a failure of advertising.

As an interesting side note, for years (we are talking through-out the 80's and 90's, and possibly even before) there was a hermit who lived somewhere on that land. I grew up just a little ways up the road in Colonies North and as a teenager we would hear stories about him. The stories all had him as kind of like a bogey man. Do you all know that little Tetco store on Wurzbach and I-10? I actually met him there one time. He looked like the director Peter Jackson, but was very, very tall. He was soft spoken, not as unkempt as I would imagine a hermit would be. His clothes were clean. The store clerk told me that he came in there once or twice a month, and that he also occasionally made it up to the HEB on LockHill and Military.

I heard that he was run-off when they built the Wurzbach Parkway extension in the late 1990's, but that never made sense to me since there was so much open land on either side of the parkway. I always wondered if he is still there somewhere. I should go back to the Tetco and ask.

[Bo]

I went to the Open House on Saturday and the public meeting last night for Voelcker Park. About 300 people showed up for the public meeting, way more than the city folks were expecting!

Some highlights of the early-stage plans from my notes:

• The park will be 75% natural and 25 % improved.
• There will be 3 educational facilities for programs: an Urban Ecology Center, the Heritage Farmstead and the Salado Creek Trailhead and Classroom
• There will be 7.6 miles of walking and hiking trails, accessible to strollers. The mayor told the architects to try for a design that enables people with strollers to be able to get from one end of the park to the other.
• Some/most of the trails will likely be closed to bike traffic. There is a bike trail planned along Wurzbach Parkway that will follow the Salado creek bed and connect to Walker Ranch Park.
• The trails will be designed in 4 distinct loops to make them easier to follow and prevent users from getting lost. The loops are tentatively named for the features of the park they highlight: Grassland, Oak, Water and Geology. There will also be shortcuts between the loops to enable people to travel between them and vary their routes through the park.
• There are no formal athletic fields planned for the park, although the open spaces may be suitable for practices or pick-up games. There will be sport courts, probably tennis and basketball.
• The open fields may be used for amphitheater events for a few hundred people.
• There may be a fenced in dog park area or two, in which owners would be allowed to let dogs run off leash. Outside the dog park, the leash laws would be enforced.
• There may be a skateboard and bike stunt course. Officially, this is called the "skate, bike and skills" area.
• The architects want to add a dead end to Old Blanco to restore the Salado creek bed and create a new pedestrian/bike entrance to the park. That idea would have to get buy-in from the nearby residents.
• There will be entrances from Blanco and NW Military, with 160 parking spaces at Blanco, and 350 spaces at the NW Military entrance.
• The architects want to include a land bridge over Wurzbach Parkway, connecting the two sides. It would be covered with dirt and grass to enable wildlife/people to cross between the two sides. The bridge would be 150 to 180 ft wide, which would create quite a tunnel on Wurzbach!
• The park will be accessible from 2 VIA bus stops.
• There will be buffers and physical barriers at the park edges to keep activities away from the adjacent neighborhoods.
• There may be a park security building included somewhere on the grounds.
• There will be splash pools and wading pools, but a full-fledged swimming pool is too expensive to consider.
• There may be an area for disc golf.
• The city hopes to begin construction on a $5 million phase in late summer or early fall and open some portion of the park by the end of 2008. What that phase will be and what the total cost of the project will be have yet to be determined.

[Dube665]

Can anyone tell me what the best park (in your opinion) is here in SA. I live on the Southside and all the parks are run down and some are scary. I sometimes drive thru Espada but never stop (too many guys sitting alone in their cars - yuck). Roosevelt Park has been fixed up but the whole area is kinda rough. Same for Division Park.

We usually end up at Brack but lately (like this past Sunday) it was over crowed and there must have been a biker rally going on because there were plenty of them there. We ended up just driving back home.

I would like to check out some other parks but dont know where to go. We've been to MacAurther and to LBJ but found them kinda dull. What other parks have a great playground, skate area, nice picnic tables and bar-b-que pits? We are just looking for something that is nice and clean and not full of wierdos.

Any suggestions?

[ChrisSA_wxatUIW]

Wow, that looks really nice!!! Like Oldmanshirt said, I'm glad the city is doing the right thing with the land...

Originally Posted by Dube665

Can anyone tell me what the best park (in your opinion) is here in SA. I live on the Southside and all the parks are run down and some are scary. I sometimes drive thru Espada but never stop (too many guys sitting alone in their cars - yuck). Roosevelt Park has been fixed up but the whole area is kinda rough. Same for Division Park.

We usually end up at Brack but lately (like this past Sunday) it was over crowed and there must have been a biker rally going on because there were plenty of them there. We ended up just driving back home.

I would like to check out some other parks but dont know where to go. We've been to MacAurther and to LBJ but found them kinda dull. What other parks have a great playground, skate area, nice picnic tables and bar-b-que pits? We are just looking for something that is nice and clean and not full of wierdos.

Any suggestions?

On the NW side, there's a park called O.P.Shnabel (I might have spelled that wrong). It's really nice: playgrounds, trails, picnic tables, b-ball courts, other athletic fields, a YMCA, overhangs, bbq pits, the works!
Anyway, the trails there are really cool, and alot of people go biking there. There's also this cliff-thing.... it's interesting- I don't know how to describe it other than, it's this random cliff in the middle of nowhere but it has a nice view.