University Park Wants Input On Snider Plaza Proposals
University Park announced via the city’s website this week that staff has been working with a design team to finalize exhibits that lay out proposed improvements in Snider Plaza and is gearing up for virtual meetings to get input from stakeholders.
A city council work session set for 1 p.m. April 14 will include a first iteration of a concept design for Snider Plaza.
Virtual stakeholder meetings for merchants and property owners are set for April 22 at the following times:
- Zone 1 – 8 a.m. (for businesses between Lovers Lane and Rankin)
- Zone 2 – 9:30 a.m. (for businesses between Rankin and Rosedale)
- Zone 3 – 11 a.m. (for businesses between Rosedale and Haynie)
To register for a stakeholder video session, email ahartwick@uptexas.org.
Residents will reportedly have a chance to view and comment on the design concepts prior to the city council’s consideration following the presentations to merchants and business owners. A date for that community meeting has not been finalized.
Parking, infrastructure, landscaping, and other improvements to Snider Plaza have been the focus of multiple city councils for many years. The city engaged Paris Rutherford of the Catalyst Group in 2018 to facilitate a series of public meetings to identify such improvements and make follow-up recommendations to the city.
The city then engaged Pacheco Koch civil engineers to design water and sewer replacement that is slated to begin later this year.
The city also re-engaged the Catalyst Group to facilitate the detailed design of related landscape and other amenity improvements working with Space Between Landscape Studio.
This design includes parking management implementation strategies and will involve the identification of potential funding strategies associated with different levels of improvements involving: restoration, enhancement, amenities, and programming (“REAP”) options for the area.
City staff organized these options into a formal strategy that was presented to the city council in a work session in January.
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Thank you, UP City. We are all looking forward to having an upgraded Snider Plaza that is more pedestrian friendly, more bicycle friendly, with more trees, more benches, more spaces, larger sidewalks and more outdoor spaces for restaurants. It will be important to calibrate the demands from neighbors and UP residents with those of Snider Plaza businesses. Neighbors and UP residents constitute a large percentage of Snider Plaza clients. We are very excited that UP City is undertaking this project with top notch experts and consultants. Thank you.
Peter Robert