Browse City's Options For Turning Riverfront Boulevard Into a Complete-Ish Street

OK. So. About that Belleview Connector below.

The reason it's on the Trinity River Corridor Project Committee's agenda tomorrow is because that bridge -- which, as more than a few Friends of Unfair Park have pointed out, doesn't really seem to go anywhere at the moment -- is part of the city's bigger-picture vision for the redevelopment of Riverfront Boulevard. At least, a piece of it. You remember that, right?

Why, seems like only yesterday we got our first look at the city's plans to convert that stretch of The Boulevard Formerly Known as Industrial between Cadiz and Continental into a (cough) Complete Street, complete with bike lanes, at the cost of around $54 million (there's only $40 mil on hand, via bond money, county dough and a huge contribution from the North Central Texas Council of Governments). And it seems like only yesterday that a certainly newly elected city council member (Hello, Griggs) wrote something about how the city's proposal was disingenuous at best and just flat-out dangerous at worst.

Well, a year later the council committee will hear Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan explain that the city now has five options when it comes to Riverfront, which the city says will one day "Serve as a major connector between downtown, Trinity, Cedars West, and the Design District; link various trails in the area; [and] provide key access to significant tracts of land with high development potential." (One of those, you may recall, was that 60 acres' worth of JPI land now the possession of Bank of the Ozarks.)

The city can: Make it eight lines for cars with a single cycle track; go down to six vehicular lanes, with two bike lanes; keep what's there and add some "enhanced streetscape"; do nothing; or somehow combine the first three options but shrink 'em at the same time.

The Belleview Connector would, says the city, hit some of that land with "high development potential"; in fact, of all the hike-n-bike trails on the briefing's map of "Planned Bicycle Connections To Riverfront Blvd.," it's the one that comes closest to the stretch of Industrial being discussed.