Protest over McAllen roadway renewed

McALLEN - The proposed extension of Bicentennial Boulevard through North McAllen is rankling property owners again, only four years after they fought off plans to build a multi-lane highway through their neighborhoods.

At a meeting tonight, the McAllen City Commission is scheduled to set the right-of-way - the land dedicated to future road construction - at 150 feet for the road.

The five-mile extension from Nolana in North McAllen to University Drive in Edinburg is planned to be 54 feet wide. While construction plans haven't changed, the city wants to establish rights to the land for possible future expansions, Assistant City Manager Pilar Rodriguez said.

At a hearing last week, property owners protested the move, saying it is likely to lower their home values and the quality of life in their neighborhoods. The city, represented by the San Antonio law firm Cox Smith, has already filed condemnation lawsuits against seven property owners for a separate but related project - the installation of a new sewer main that would follow an identical path as the future Bicentennial extension.

One of the residents protesting the proposed right-of-way expansion is City Commissioner Scott Crane, who lives in one of the neighborhoods through which the extension would pass and whose father owns land the city would need to acquire.

Four years ago Crane led a neighborhood campaign against a proposal to extend Bicentennial and turn it into a multi-lane parkway with overpasses. The City Commission voted down the proposal, and Crane was elected the following May, riding the popularity from his victory against the parkway.

"I do completely agree we need that corridor - 10th and 23rd streets are getting so clogged," Crane said. "But 150 feet is egregious. ...

"It's really an arbitrary number grabbed from the sky. There was no engineering work done to support it."

Crane said he would need to consult with the city attorney to determine whether he could vote on the proposed change.

Technically, the City Commission will decide tonight whether to narrow the right-of-way for Bicentennial from 350 feet, as was set in the McAllen master plan passed late last year.

How that figure ended up in the plan, known as Foresight McAllen, is a matter of debate.

At the hearing last week, Foresight McAllen Chairman Willard Moon said his committee approved a 150-foot right-of-way for Bicentennial. The Foresight plan, which included extensive details on roadway expansion in the coming decades, was then sent to city staff before being presented to the City Commission.

Crane said City Manager Mike Perez told him he had changed the plan in consultation with former city commissioner Jan Klink, who worked on Foresight both before and after leaving office.

"I believe that's a vision the city manager has. He wants to preserve it for a north-south, high-speed arterial," Crane said.

Perez is out of the country and could not be reached for comment. Klink said he did not make any changes to Foresight following the committee's final meeting.

"I'm not going to make any additional comments. I don't think it's appropriate," Klink said when asked whether Perez had made the change.

Plans to extend Bicentennial and turn it into a major thoroughfare first began in 1994 with the hope of improving traffic flow as North McAllen expanded.

But protests from residents and battles over land prices repeatedly delayed the project, and 15 years later city officials seem little closer to establishing a start date for construction.

Right now city officials are negotiating with property owners to obtain the necessary land, Rodriguez said.

"We have lots of right-of-way, but we still have lots of cracks," he said.

"There's a few private tracts, and then there's the irrigation districts."

Both Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 and No. 3 own wide strips of land, through which run irrigation canals serving farmers and residents to the north. The city plans to build Bicentennial atop that land and bury the canals, a plan that has met with general approval from irrigation district officials and now awaits an agreement on the sale price.

"Easily over half of what they need (between Nolana and Trenton Road) is in our possession," said Othal Brand Jr., president of Irrigation District No. 3.

"I don't plan on it being a showstopper," he said of the negotiations. "We're just going through the steps."

The bigger hurdle will likely be the private landowners living north of Trenton who have been fighting the prospect of a heavily trafficked road running around or across their properties for years.

Jim Melhart, one of the seven landowners sued by the city, turned down the city's offer for his land earlier this year and said he plans to fight its condemnation efforts in court.

"It's real quiet out here. We like it that way," he said.

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James Osborne covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4428.