Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

So today we're talking about Hensel Park.

That's the 50 acre Texas A&M owned park that's more than 70 years old and is located just a little north and east of South College Avenue and University Drive.

That intersection in College Station.

So imagine leaving the A&M campus and driving toward Bryan on South College Avenue, passing Century Square.

And it's on your right just before your crossing the border, separating the two cities.

It's easy to miss and it's hard to see.

And we're going to talk all about that a little bit later.

But Hensel Park has not been in tip top condition in a long time, but there are now public discussions happening about redeveloping the space into something extremely special.

And that's what we hope to dive into today.

So my co-host is KAMU student content contributor Gracie Dolan, and our guest is Dr.

Scott Shafer, executive director for Campus and Community Enrichment.

He is also a relatively new member of the College Station City Council.

Dr.

Shafer Councilman Shafer Scott, what do you prefer any of the above.

Scott is really the best.

Okay, then we're going with Scott.

Thanks so much for being here.

Of course, happy to be here.

So I know enough about you to know that you have both a personal and professional relationship with the outdoors.

So I'd love if you would talk about where all that started and how you ended up in this community.

Well, okay, I ended up in this community at an early age for my dad was a faculty member here in agricultural economics for many years.

So he brought us here, my brother and I here as kids and actually we lived on Nagle very close to Hensel Park, what we're talking about today.

And so I guess in some ways, as always, one of the first parks that I ever recall playing in and that probably began to take big.

My interest in being in the outdoors and having those kinds of opportunities.

And then I was fortunate enough to have parents who enjoyed traveling, particularly in the summers when we had opportunities to go go to conferences that my father was going to.

We would camp along the way and we got to see lots of national parks and experience lots of great outdoor spaces.

So I just kind of being that way felt like, well, I'll be somebody who goes and does that as a living, you know, for a living.

And that's where I got into it.

And I really originally kind of wanted to work as a park ranger, but over time I decided to continue in school and I became a professor in that area.

And somehow Hensel Park has landed it in your lap.

It has.

And I think being back I've been back in the community for almost 30 years and that has sort of changed my outlook on the community.

You know, I think sometimes as a kid You know, I think sometimes as a kid growing up here, you're like, How fast can I get out?

You know, I want to be someplace else.

I want to be I want to live in, particularly if you're into the outdoors, maybe you think you want to live in Colorado or someplace in the west, someplace with mountains.

And I really need to realize that this is my place.

College Station and Bryan and Texas A&M are my place.

And if I'm going to be in the outdoors every day or close to it, I need to figure out how to do that locally.

You know, what can I do locally from a personal perspective and hopefully for the over time begin to think about the larger community and how can the larger community benefit from those things as well.

Yeah, that that is so special that Hensel Park Yeah, that that is so special that Hensel Park was your childhood park and now you get to be in charge of all of this.

Could you tell us a little about what the grand vision for the new and improved Hensel Park is and what some of the most essential features of it would be.

And if there's maybe a rough timeline for whenever it could be completed, if that exists.

Those are very good questions.

Gracie I The grand vision has evolved over time.

You know, I've been looking at some historical documents and I was just looking at something from 1966, and it had similar ideas to what are being proposed today.

It's really interesting to see how often these kinds of ideas have come up for the park and have never really been implemented for a variety of reasons, probably mostly because of money.

That's often what things come down to or money.

But today's vision has evolved through work with students on campus and a committee that was put together by the university.

Greg Hartman, who was chief operating officer at the time, put together a committee a few years ago that involved landscape architecture students.

Dr.

Shannon Lee, who's a professor of landscape architecture, put one of her studios on this, and this is the most recent, if you will, studio project and all in a line of studio projects.

But these students were seniors and they did a great job of coming up with a variety of ideas.

Some of you all have seen.

I've shared those with you, but I guess it's really about keeping the park in a more or less natural state Now that differs depending on who you talk to.

What is nature?

You know what means, what does it mean it?

We have Aggie Park.

You all we most of us in the community are familiar with how Aggie Park is redeveloped and what an amazing amenity that has become in so many ways.

So I don't think it's exactly that kind of vision which, you know, Aggie Park has got the big pavilion and and a variety of things in it that that are probably a little more high maintenance, the like, for example and some of those some of those amenities.

But it definitely would have aspects of that which so that maybe the vision for Hensel current vision for Hensel would have aspects of that so that we could have events there, you know, but we would also have places where you could walk on trails or ride on trails, you know, take your family to play in a playground, particularly if it was sort of a more nature based playground.

I don't know what image that creates in people's minds, but but playgrounds that have more naturalistic elements, it would also potentially have some adult play based on this vision.

So, you know, we have a climbing wall at the rec center that's indoors.

We have had outdoor climbing structures, the rec center.

I don't think we do right now, but this might have outdoor climbing structures for college students to use and other kinds of adult play.

Of course, running and walking and riding are also forms of adult recreation and play.

So it would largely be based on trails and with some forms of play, at least initially with some opportunities for picnicking and other outdoor activities.

That's also on that.

It's there's so much in there going through it all.

It was just like, wow.

So Jay tells me that the plans to update Hensel Park have been mostly a whisper initiative for many years, even decades.

He thinks.

How and why did it become more than that?

Were you maybe a catalyst for this change, for it going beyond the whispers?

No, I don't think it would be me.

I, I think it's been on the radar of student affairs, student activities and student affairs for quite a while.

Off and on.

There are a lot of folks are who've worked really hard on it to make some things happen in the park.

And I think it, you know, our past administration, President Banks, had an interest in doing this and she put Greg Hartman on it, as I mentioned.

And Greg formed this committee.

So the most recent encouragement came through that that past administration, the current administration president Welsh, is very much in favor of it.

He likes the idea a lot.

He sees the benefits of it, and he's been encouraging.

I, I guess I've been pretty closely involved with it over time because it's been something I've been very interested in.

But I've also I also taught park planning and design here for a long time, which is kind of landscape architecture for parks and recreation students.

And because of that, I would take that space and focus on it from time to time and ask students to look at it and think about it.

And in fact, Student Affairs student activities came to us back in 2013 and ask us to do exactly that.

And we did it in the early 2000.

So I think I've had at least three or four classes look at the park over time.

So but I think partly the reason is I've just been really interested.

My wife, Debbie, is also a College Station native.

She taught in recreation, parks and tourism for a while and event management, and probably one of the most recent motivations for it was Debbie taking her class there in event management and saying, as event students, what could you do with this space?

You know, what could happen here?

So and she grew up playing in the park too, so we both kind of talk about it and think about it a lot.

CC So the plan that you allowed us to look at, I believe the documentation said that it was developed between August of 2022 and August of 2023.

I think that's right.

That's about right.

So and I know that's not that long ago, but time has passed.

So do you think those proposed plans are still relevant and or the right people at A&M and the two cities, you know, still buying into the initiative?

I do.

I think they're still relevant.

And I missed that part of your question.

Gracie, I apologize.

It was about the timeline.

The the plans that I shared with you all are still being shared with other parties.

They're being they were shared recently with Intergovernmental Committee.

And there was a lot of interest.

You know, when we show these plans, people are excited about it.

So I think they're still relevant, of course, before anything concrete, if you will, maybe a bad word for a park, But before anything like that happens, there would be additional input and additional thought put into what would the final design actually look like.

I hope that the design, the concept that we have now would be the guiding piece and that those general ideas would carry through.

But right now, as with a lot of student projects in this area, it becomes a tool to get people interested, to get them excited, to get them thinking.

And so from that standpoint, I think it's very relevant.

It's very helpful to have it.

Yeah, good.

That makes sense.

Since the plan was completed, we all know more high rise apartments have been built and obviously still more are planning to come with that population growth in such close proximity to Hensel Park, is that going to affect at all how the park is reimagined?

I think that was that was taken into account when this particular concept was put together because that growth and change has been happening for a while, as you know.

And in fact, it's staggering.

I didn't really understand how fast it was growing until more recently when I got on the council and other numbers started to come at me.

It's it's about 9500 residents in a you know, about a one mile radius now, maybe a mile and a half.

So within a 10 to 15 minute walk, you know, you got a ton of people and I'm actually not sure, as I say, that if that includes your neighborhood or if it includes the Bryan neighborhood, you know, immediately across the street, I think that's primarily what we think of as Northgate, right?

I think it's those high the horror of all those apartments.

Those need to come in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's what you're talking about.

And that's like a 45% increase in the last four years of years, you know, because of those high rises.

And so that is a huge piece of this because people who live in higher density areas don't have yards.

They they need places to get out and put their toes in the grass, walk their dog, just enjoy these outdoor spaces.

Right.

So this would provide access to a really nice relatively large for an and you know, sort of a middle of town kind of piece of property.

It's not clear how big the park would be in the end.

The place we think of as Hensel park and is used as Hensel Park right now is about 26 acres.

But there's a potential to go.

As you mentioned, I think in your first introduction to maybe as many as 50 acres.

So that remains to be seen.

But but I think it provides tremendous opportunity for the people living in that area.

And you all may you may be asking about this in the in before we're finished.

But just across the street, across college, the city of Bryan is amassing properties that they are envisioning as north of Northgate.

And the concept drawings for that are phenomenal.

I mean, it's just it would be a just an amazing place to have to live and potentially work.

And and certainly you know, retail and restaurants and all sorts of things are envisioned in those concepts, which is separate from what the Culpepper family.

Yes.

Doing right?

Yes.

Yes.

Now, now, just up the road, as you point out, where where I think of as Skaggs Albertson's used to be.

Yes.

That is being redeveloped right now into additional high rise space that would be primarily student living.

But it's also very likely to have a mix of retail, potentially a grocery store.

I mean, it's hard to say what all might what all might wind up there.

So it's pretty exciting.

You know, I served on the planning zoning commission in the early 2000s and people made comments about high rises in Northgate.

And I thought in no way will ever have high rises in Northgate.

Boy, was I wrong.

That's the only Northgate I know is Northgate.

Yeah.

There you go.

So you're just right.

You're much younger, that's all you've seen.

I thought I had no idea it would ever be that way.

well, I'm going to ask you about some numbers.

The report estimates $9.3 million spent on phase one, with the biggest costs being 2.5 million for the two miles of the multi-use trails that we were talking about earlier.

I think you've said somewhere else that it would now cost more than the 9.3 million original estimate.

Are there multiple phases happening?

How many total phases?

And of course, dollars do you think will be required to transform it?

The phase one price, as you mentioned, was at about $9.2 million an estimate a couple of years ago.

It's hard to say how much prices have changed in that period of time.

You know, we even in casual conversations, we seem to hear, you know, about how construction prices are going up and they've gone up a lot.

So in recent presentations, Gracie, I've been saying, know, 11 to $12 million for phase one, just to sort of be safe.

I don't know what the actual amount would come.

It would also depend on how things are changed a bit.

You know, once you really sit down with people and say, what is it actually going to be based on this concept?

But but that seems like a reasonable estimate.

The other fact, there are three phases that were originally envisioned.

The first phase would be the one that really kind of redeveloped Hensel Park, as we think of it now that 28 acres I was telling you about and then the other phases would move sort of really north east toward Texas Avenue.

And at the very least, my vision would be to somehow connect Texas Avenue with the trail system, even if it weren't completely developed in in larger chunks.

You know, it's hard to say what what can happen in terms of the university's willingness to provide property, etc., in that area.

So then that opens it up to a whole nother section of town.

That's access to it.

Yeah.

And can you imagine the connectivity through the park?

So if you lived over and in a part of College Station or Bryan over past East of Texas Avenue particularly, I guess, Bryan, you could ride or walk to the campus much more easily because you could just cut right through the park on a trail system and then head South College was a great trail there, right up to the edge of the campus, and you would never really have to mess with traffic, automobile traffic.

what a dream it'd be.

Grant asked again.

What a dream if you just tuned in.

I'm Jay Socol with Gracie Dolan.

You're listening to Brass Matters.

And our guest today is Scott Shafer.

Texas A&M's executive director for Campus and Community Enrichment.

And we are talking about the proposed redevelopment of Hensel Park, which the university owns.

So are there additional funding partners for this entities besides Texas A&M?

Yes, there would need to be, Jay.

We have always thought of this.

I say we are more than just myself, but I certainly have always thought of us as a great opportunity for Texas A&M College Station and Bryan to work together on something because it's right there where all three things exist, right?

It's Texas A&M property is technically in College Station, but it's right against Bryan on three sides.

So Bryan would have tremendous access.

And of course, this development I was telling you about north of North Gate would essentially a lot of it would look right into the park and there would be great secondary value, you know, adjacency value because of that.

So having said that, City of Bryan is interested in participating.

City College Station is interested in participating.

Texas A&M has an interest, but it's it's not locked in, if you will.

There's no absolute commitment from anybody yet.

The City of College Station has for a long time had a mandatory dedication ordinance, which as units are built, as beds are built.

Essentially, there is a Parkland dedication fee that goes with that.

Right.

So there would be funding based on some of the development in the North Gate area.

Well, I couldn't say for sure what it is, and I don't want to get in any trouble.

I do believe there would be some funds available through the City College Station based on that Parkland dedication fee, but we have yet to see what that really looks like.

Texas A&M has also been the Executive Facilities Committee was approved some participation in this last fall, but getting the actual funding locked is is a more difficult proposition.

And would this potentially, you know, once this this park begins to be redeveloped and operates as a park, would that open opportunities to parks and recreation and tourism classes to actually go out there and use that as their learning laboratory?

That's a that's a great point.

And that was one of the things that was built into the concept was the idea that students would have access to this.

Now, you know, my my Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism is now hospitality hotel management and tourism.

So it's it's got a little bit of a different emphasis.

But I do believe, yes, there would still be students in that program who would be interested in using a park, for example, event management.

There's an event management certificate that's still taught, and those students would have opportunities to learn through potentially staging events in this space, but certainly in landscape architecture and some of the departments that deal with natural sciences like and water management, there are opportunities for stormwater management.

There's opportunities for looking at native plants and native wildlife in urban areas, urban settings.

These are all pretty hot topics and in a lot of areas.

And you need urban labs like this to get them.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I want to ask you a granular question based on the the renderings and the proposals that we got to look at.

One of the renderings shows a small lake with kayakers in it.

And so, I mean, I'm somebody who lives across the creek from this.

Does that kind of water exist over there?

It it doesn't now, but it could and it did in the past.

Yeah.

So there's a 1946 air photograph that I dug up that has a lake in it that in the photograph is actually labeled Scoates Lake.

And so Professor Scoates was one of the depart early department heads in agricultural engineering.

And there's a building on campus, as you may list his name.

Yeah, Name.

it's gorgeous.

Yes, It's a really cool building.

But.

But the scouts, like, existed there.

And and, you know, it was it was pretty good size.

I can't tell from the images in air photographs.

So it's hard to say how big it is.

But it did exist.

Now.

It's gone now.

But those are the kinds of things that can be built.

They cost more money to do those kinds of things.

Just like at Aggie Park, you know, that lake was essentially built and it was beautiful, right?

It's got rock where people fish in it all the time.

It's a fantastic amenity, but it's also a more expensive amenity from the standpoint of building and maintaining.

So hard to say.

The students included a lot of images like that in their concept to generate interest and to generate questions like you just asked.

Well, it generated interest with me because I saw it and thought, Where is that?

Yeah.

You know, is it covered up in grasses or what?

Yeah, it's not it's not there.

There are a couple of creeks that run through the one that that forms the border between your neighborhood in the park.

And then there's another that comes down in low, which I don't know if you all know in low.

Inlow has a street on the Bryan side.

And the street on the College Station side is kind of a dull due respect.

Bit of a ditch right now.

Right.

But that is a tributary of that same creek system.

I think it's the Burton Creek system that ends up going into Carter Creek, east of town.

So a side note, too, that when we saw a presentation just at the last Intergovernmental Committee meeting that the city of Bryan was showing what they wanted to do with north of North Gate.

And they're very interested in creating a linear greenspace, what I would call a greenway along Inlow that would really change the character of that from do respect a ditch to a stream, a creek, a water feature that has a nice pathway and trees and shade and would connect across college into Hensel Park.

That would be great because that's a that's a strange little stretch.

It is a very strange stretch.

Yeah.

Well, with more than 50 parks in each city, both Bryan and College Station.

Does Hensel Park need to do all of the things that are in the reports or that are represented in the reports or like, would all of this fill an identified gap that maybe is left by other parks or.

What's the biggest gap I've and this is sort of selfish but as somebody who rides a bicycle and likes to hike and walk and things like that, I felt for a long time like the biggest gap we have in Bryan College Station are trails of length.

I could agree with that.

So we have the little creek hiking bike trail south of town, which is relatively heavily used.

I think it's a little bit out of sight, out of mind still, but this would be a trails based park.

So if you moved into it and depending on what acreage is actually developed or what the trails actually end up looking like, you could have two or three miles of trails within the park, maybe more, depending on how you put your loops together and things like that.

And of course it would be connected to the campus relatively well, it'd be connected to Bryan through sidewalks, systems, etc.

So if you're in particular, if you're walking, I guess it would be a little bit more link there.

But that's the that's the gap that I think it would help fill.

Plus this idea of the educational piece where you've got potential for interesting stormwater management, interesting urban wildlife opportunity and interesting, you know, looking at various urban landscapes, native plants, those kinds of things.

And you're you're right there.

Right.

Right there.

That's right.

In the report, there's a desire shown to remove the berm that runs along South College Avenue so that people can actually see the park and what's going on back there.

How important is that?

Well, I think it's really important at this point.

And I understand the berm, why the berm was put in, the berm was put in to sort of do a couple of things.

And it doesn't does one of them very well?

Originally, there are there are still open fields behind the berm where people played soccer and, you know, baseball and other kinds of things.

And so it kind of helped to contain contain the ball, you know, as much as anything else, not quite like a fence, but in a similar way.

The other thing it did was it created this element of visual separation so that when you're in the park, you really are kind of hidden and cut off from the rest of the urban area.

And that can be good in some cases.

But I think it's not as good in urban areas like, like where this park, like where Hansel is located because out of sight, out of mind, out of sight, hidden, it creates an opportunity for people to not be seen by others and therefore sometimes engage in activities that we don't think are very wholesome.

Right.

So I think as Park, unfortunately, right now has a reputation for that and has a reputation for not being one of the safer parks in town.

And I've talked to the University Police Department and they were they are very interested in having some of these changes made at Hensel so that it would be more heavily used there, be more positive eyes on the park.

The berm would be a part of that, because then you would also have traffic on South College that would essentially be looking into the park as it passes.

It would also be more inviting to people on college, right?

They would say, look at that activity over there.

Look at those fun, fun places to be.

I think I'll pull in and take a look.

You know, So I think the the berm is an interesting feature, but I do think removing that and providing better visual access into the park is going to be a real key to its improvement.

So as we start winding down our time, I want to ask you about another prominent feature, the iconic lift shaped pavilion called the Marsh Dome.

And that some of the materials you provided showed it was, I think, constructed in 1964, invented by an Aggie featured at the World's Fair and New York.

So what's the most reasonable and practical use for that?

Well, I think the most reasonable practical use is to have it as a feature to come see and appreciate.

And also it's large enough to do small events under the dome now, and that has been done.

People have taken their taekwondo classes in there and and done other things in there on a regular basis, but it's in bad need of repair.

It is, as you say, a really interesting historic structure because it was developed by James Marsh, the first department head in construction science here at A&M.

It was it was seen as a really interesting way to construct something at the time.

It still is, I guess.

And then it was used at the World's Fair in 1964 in New York.

And so it's got this.

And in fact, at one point they wanted to put a historic marker on it, but it was put off until some other planning had been finished.

That planning has since finished and the marker never got put up.

So I really feel like that's a key kind of neat piece to even take people and say, Look at this, look what we've got.

Yeah, it is iconic.

It's like it's the equivalent to me of the Crown on top of the The Queen Theater in downtown.

That's a great point.

Yes.

Yeah, Yeah.

The image kept coming up as I was going through the report, and I just kept thinking what it what is this?

I'd see the image and then I'd read and they would say, the iconic cliff shaped pavilion.

I'm like, Is this?

I'm connecting the dots, but I'm still confused.

So yeah, it's interesting to know, like the history behind it and stuff like that.

So all over College Station, I feel like.

Okay, so do you have a dream of a phase one timeline?

Can we get this funded and done by 2030?

I mean, what are we talking about in your head?

Well, I would certainly hope by 2030 J I think a couple of things will continue there.

Some of that development that happens, you know, the development where like pop stroke is now and Century Square, that's all university land.

And so those are lease agreements with the university and so if some of that continues to develop, that will potentially provide funding.

I'm going to begin working on it in other ways to see who else might provide funding.

I would hope maybe in the next year to two years we can actually begin to have some real traction by 2030.

Yeah, let's was definitely hope.

So.

That sounds Space age, Jetsons like stuff, but it's not that far away.

No, you're right.

It's not.

Scott Shafer, thank you so much for being here and talking about Hensel Park.

This is pretty exciting.

I think so too, and I appreciate you all having me very much.

It's always fun to talk about it and think about it.

And I hope that maybe as people hear this, they will become motivated as well and can get behind it.

Absolutely.

Brazos Matters is a production of Aggieland's Public Radio, 90.9 KAMU FM, a member of Texas A&M University's Division of Marketing and Communications.

Our show is engineered and edited by Matt Dittman.

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For Gracie Dolan, I am Jay Socol.

Thank you so much for watching and listening and hope you have a great day.