Construction that starts this month on the McCoys Creek branches will cost $12.65 million. The city will spend an additional $3.4M on cleanup of contaminated soil.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The branch of McCoys Creek that cuts through Hollybrook Park in the North Riverside neighborhood resembles a ditch more than a natural stream. Vegetation clogs its steep banks. Metal signposts, tires and other trash clutter the waterway.

But after a multimillion dollar restoration reshapes the branches in the headwaters of McCoys Creek, supporters of the project say they envision children being able to wade in the shallow water of meandering, narrow channels designed to send cleaner water into McCoys Creek on its journey to the St. Johns River.

The work on the headwaters will be the latest piece of the largest flood control project in Jacksonville. It will offer the best place for the transformation to give up-close encounters with the waterway.

“I grew up next to a creek like this and one of our favorite outdoor activities was to get in that creek and explore it,” Groundwork Jacksonville CEO Kay Ehas said at a Feb. 4 groundbreaking ceremony at Hollybrook Park.

John Keifer, an engineer heading up design for McCoys Creek, said he had the same experience playing in and around a creek at his grandfather’s house so it struck a chord when neighborhood residents said they wanted children to have a “better, healthier and more playful connection” to the creek.

“We knew very quickly that the most approachable part of the McCoys Creek restoration would be here at the branches, not further downstream where it’s a much bigger creek,” he said.

The construction that starts this month on the McCoys Creek branches will cost $12.65 million. The city will spend an additional $3.4 million on cleanup of contaminated soil from a former ash dump site.

Groundwork Jacksonville won a $5.18 million grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection and $2.6 million from the federal NOAA Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation for restoring the branches. The city is covering the rest of the cost.

Longtime resident Shirley Thomas, president of the North Riverside Community Development Corp., said she hopes the new look for McCoys Creek will bring more people to the waterway and boost the neighborhood where she’s lived for 64 years.

Thomas said North Riverside, Mixon Town and Lackawanna were working-class neighborhoods when she was growing up with many holding jobs at railyards and shipyards. McCoys Creek was a place where people went for picnics. They also went swimming in the deep portions of the creek, though that was risky.

“When we hear a siren or we see someone from a funeral home, we know that someone had gotten drowned in that creek,” she recalled.

She said after construction of Interstate 10 in the 1960s, North Riverside went into decline and became a “forgotten neighborhood.”

Thomas said by restoring McCoys Creek and extending the Emerald Trail pathway along it in a future construction project, the community will be reconnected “not only to the nature but also with our neighbors in Brooklyn and Riverside, LaVilla and downtown.”

The construction on the branches is the third of four segments of McCoys Creek in a project aimed at creating better drainage for neighborhoods that historically flooded when the creek overflowed.

Layered on top of flood control is improvements to water quality and wildlife habitat that Mayor Donna Deegan said is bringing “nature and eventually recreation back to the creek and back to the neighborhoods.”

“The restoration of McCoys Creek is not only a model for our city but also for cities across our state and beyond,” Deegan said in her remarks.

The construction on the branches will be in the western end of McCoys Creek where its biggest benefit will be enhanced water quality along with some drainage improvements. According to Groundwork Jacksonville, models show that 18 homes currently at risk of flooding in a 100-year-storm will move out of that category after work on the branches is complete

The headwaters flow into an already finished section of McCoys Creek from Leland Street — just west of the King Street bridge — to Interstate 95.

Continuing downstream past I-95, design is under way for the section through the Brooklyn neighborhood. At the end of McCoys Creek, work is already finished on a new channel where the creek empties into the St. Johns River.

City Council member Tyrona Clark-Murray said in terms of the entire McCoys Creek project, the biggest change will be reducing the risk of neighborhood flooding. She said it’s also good to see the city will be cleaning up ash contamination as part of the work.

Clark-Murray, who represent sNorth Riverside, is looking at ways Hollybrook Park can be a neighborhood spot where people can unwind and play near the creek and eventually enjoy going into the water.

“I think as it continues to get cleaner, people will gather at it and find frogs and crawdads,” she said. “But I don’t think we’re at that point.”

Editor’s note: This story was first published by our news partners, The Florida Times-Union.