A North Texas city is slated to get a new $50 million recreational park.
Celina’s city council has adopted final master plans for Wilson Creek Park, a proposed 100-acre recreational area featuring a large pavilion, a scenic pond with a fountain, a dog park, multiple pedestrian walking trails, a playground, an amphitheater, and dedicated areas for sports.
Located on the south side of Celina off Future Sunset Boulevard and Roseland Parkway, the 100-acre park is expected to be a major point of attraction for the community once completed. A development timeline has not yet been determined.
Before Wilson Creek Park can be developed, it must receive community support, the site’s ecosystem must be well understood, and future infrastructure requirements must be identified, according to Elizabeth Mcllrath Jarrell, a principal and line of business executive at Dunaway Associates, the Fort Worth-based civil engineering firm behind Wilson Creek Park.
“We realize with a 100-acre park in the middle of a community that’s growing like Celina, this is a special moment for us to make sure that we’re developing a park that’s meeting your community needs; we realize the importance of this,” Jarrell said, per The Dallas Morning News.
Wilson Creek Park will be a multi-phase project with the first phase projected to cost roughly $30 million. The project’s overall construction cost is budgeted at $50.75 million, according to the Final Master Plan issued in June and adopted by Celina City Council on July 11.
Budget projections are based upon 2023 market conditions and do not reflect future inflation rates greater than 2% to 3% per calendar year, Dunaway Associates note in the development document.
According to Celina Mayor Ryan Tubbs, funding for the park project is expected to come in the form of an upcoming bond package. While the timing of the issuance has not been determined, Tubbs told The Dallas Morning News that the city is “hopeful that a portion of it is included in the 2024 series.”
Getting the project from the proposal stage to the adoption stage has been a refreshing journey for Cody Webb, director of parks and recreation.
“We started off with Christmas on the Square last year. Through meetings, and surveys, and staff, and through you – we’ve come down to this [final rendering],” Webb told council members during their July meeting.
Now that the master plan has been finalized, Webb explained that the next step for the 100-acre park will be to establish a scope-of-services agreement with the architect.
