Portage’s economic development team took a field trip to Texas recently to say howdy to some advice on how to bring a new family attraction to the city’s north side and how to build a new downtown.
Portage Economic Development Corp. folks visited Roanoke to tour the downtown and Grand Prairie to visit a major public-private partnership, Planning and Development Director Tom Cherry told the Redevelopment Commission on Thursday.
“It was interesting to hear what went well for them, what they would have done differently,” he said.
Grand Prairie, population 196,100, has a development similar to what Portage is planning, Cherry said. Although he didn’t name the type of development, he described it as a family-friendly attraction that immediately brought restaurants and other ancillary development.
Grand Prairie’s website lists a series of public-private partnerships, one of which is the Epic Waters indoor waterpark.
Cherry said if the development the city has in mind comes to fruition, it would be on a portion of the vast acreage the city owns on its northwest side.
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On Thursday, the RDC approved seeking bids for extending Burns Parkway and building a bridge over Burns Waterway as well as a $15 million bond that includes funding for that project and others in the city.
Extending the road and building the bridge are considered essential to make the north side property more attractive to developers.
Roanoke, population 9,665, has a city hall that puts Portage’s to shame. It also has a new downtown that started with a single road 10 years ago, Cherry said.
“I’d like to imagine the Roanoke people were our doppelgangers,” Mayor Austin Bonta said. Roanoke is about the same distance from Dallas as Portage is from Chicago.
Portage is getting ready to build the first street of its new downtown in front of Portage Mall, changing the landscape there to be more of a traditional downtown streetscape, encouraging development on land the RDC owns just east of the mall. If Portage, which is developing quickly, sees similar results to Roanoke, the new downtown could be flourishing in just 10 years after decades of planning.
“Whenever you’re trying to look at things to either aspire to or learn from,” Bonta said, it’s important to look for similar places to see what their experience is.
Portage officials spent an hour talking with the Roanoke team at a Las Vegas convention where Roanoke sponsored a booth, Cherry said. The Portage delegation was invited to visit the Roanoke pardners if they were ever in Texas. The visit to Grand Prairie, a Dallas suburb, made that happen.
The RDC’s bond issue that is providing funding for the Burns Parkway expansion and the new bridge also includes $400,000 for demolition of the former Garyton School, $2 million for downtown mall improvements, $250,000 for Kayak Point access to Salt Creek and $1.25 million for a roundabout at the intersection of Samuelson Road and Central Avenue and a new trailhead there for the Duneland Prairie Trail to improve safety.
RDC member Ralph Mundt asked why a roundabout was needed there.
Bonta explained it would alleviate stop-and-go traffic at the intersection. The parking lot at the trailhead was built for a less busy time, and a sports complex south of the site is expected to add to the traffic there, he added.
The RDC approved starting the utility relocation process for the roundabout, a process expected to take about a year.
It also started a 30-day public comment period for two new residential tax-increment financing districts, the Sweetwater and Timberstone subdivisions.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.