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As the Rio Grande Valley continues on a trend of explosive population and economic growth, McAllen officials have been busy making plans that will allow the city to remain flexible as that growth continues.
To that end, McAllen has been working on a master plan that will guide business, residential and economic development into 2040. The city calls it “Envision McAllen.”
“A comprehensive plan is a very important document for a city’s future. It’s a long term look at big things, like transportation, land use, infrastructure, economic development, neighborhoods, things like that,” McAllen Assistant City Manager Michelle Rivera explained.
Over the last 16 months, city officials, in partnership with a committee made up of business leaders, land developers, urban planners and more have worked on retuning the city’s goals for the future.
At several points throughout the process, the city has sought out input from the public through public meetings and online comments, according to Edgar Garcia, McAllen’s planning director.
“We put all our heads together, as well as the relevant city departments, and we came up with this plan after almost 16 months of work,” Garcia said.
The listening sessions, which saw as many as 100 people attend, generated about 200 responses from the community, Garcia said.
For Rivera, that kind of turnout was pleasantly “stunning.”
“For them to come out to talk about the future of McAllen, that just shows how great our residents are because they’re very invested and they want to make a difference in the future of their community,” Rivera said.
As a result, McAllen has now been able to put together a report highlighting some of the top priorities as the city continues to grow over the next 20 years.
Among them is a trend toward more mixed-used development that allows residents to live, work and recreate hyperlocally within their communities in an idea called a “15-minute city,” Garcia said.
The proposed comprehensive plan also addresses the kinds of housing planning, called “missing middle housing” that’s needed to accommodate such an integrated urban design.
According to an executive summary of the comprehensive plan, missing middle housing “describes a range of multifamily housing, including low-rise, low-density residential duplexes to small apartment buildings that can complement single-family neighborhoods.”
More people are looking for affordable housing, Garcia explained. And that has led to changes in the types of residences people are looking for.
Rather than looking for a house, or even an apartment, people are increasingly looking for something somewhere in between.
Not only is missing middle housing more affordable to consumers, but it also allows a city like McAllen, which is largely landlocked, to maximize its existing footprint.
“That’s where the big push for mixed use development came from as well … to be able to take advantage of our land area as much as possible instead of sprawling out to our city limit and beyond,” Garcia said.
The comprehensive plan also tackles other issues, such as investing in hybrid transportation systems that can more readily accommodate not just vehicular traffic, but pedestrian and bicycle traffic, as well as public transportation.
The 143-page document is not final, however.
City staffers are still fine-tuning the document before taking their recommendations to the McAllen City Commission later this year.
Before they do that, however, they’re asking residents to look over the plan and give their feedback.
“This is a guiding document for the future of McAllen. This tells everybody who lives here, who comes here, who sees it on the web, this is what McAllen wants to be as it grows up, as it grows into the future,” Rivera said.
Residents can look over the draft comprehensive plan and provide their input at McAllen2040.com.
