Celina gets a first look at master plan for Wilson Creek Park

Celina Record
By Audrey Henvey | Star Local Media
June 21, 2023

The vision for Celina’s “next big park” is coming into sharper focus.

Following months of preparation including site visits, gathering community input and creating alternative concept designs, the Celina City Council on June 13 got a look at a proposed final master plan for Wilson Creek Park. The park, slated to be located at the corner of future Sunset Boulevard and Roseland Parkway, will span approximately 100 acres.

“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,” said Elizabeth Mcllrath Jarrell, principal with Dunaway Associates, in a presentation to the council.

The June 13 presentation came after multiple iterations of gathering input from the Celina community about the planned park, including opinions on two alternative concepts that had been drawn up. After a survey regarding the two concepts garnered 1,072 responses, a final master plan was created and presented June 13.

“The beauty of having a park this size is you’ve got a lot of room,” Mcllrath Jarrell said, “not just for your athletic needs, which take up a lot of space, but you’ve also got a lot of room for other community support activities, whether you’re supporting festivals, a dog park, you’re able to build ponds that we can water from and save on irrigation costs, that all made it into the consensus concept.”

The presented final master plan included a diamond sports complex that would include artificial turf, covered bleachers and 300-foot foul lines.

“So you’d be able to have very big tournaments,” Mcllrath Jarrell said. “That could be a destination and also a revenue generator if council chooses to go that direction.”

Park features also include an irrigation pond, dog park area, trail system, court sports area and a neighborhood park that has potential for an amphitheater, destination playground and open space for festivals. Mcllrath Jarrell estimated that an event area at the park could host anywhere from 13,500 to 15,000 people.

Estimated cost to construct the park landed at about $50.75 million, Mcllrath Jarrell said. She added that work had been done to estimate costs for a “phase one” of the park, which landed at about $30 million.

“There’s so much potential with this park. At this stage, it’s our final master plan, but it’s still preliminary,” Mcllrath Jarrell said. “We’d love to have questions from you all, input. What we’ll do after tonight is we’ll go back and we’ll refine to a final concept that would incorporate your questions or incorporate any comments, and then I think the idea would be to come back in July for potential adoption.”

See the full presentation at this link: tinyurl.com/49hsj7v4.