LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A renovation and expansion to one of the beating hearts in Downtown Lubbock is now one step closer to breaking ground.
Architects and leaders behind a 60,000-square-foot expansion to the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center now have new feedback to consider. They hosted a pair of public meetings to gain input on the plan to revitalize that part of downtown.
The addition would be used primarily for exhibits, conventions and concerts. It would also convert the existing 40,000-square-foot facility into a ballroom and exhibit space function.
One of the biggest concerns for this plan is what it would do to traffic in the area.
“We’ve looked at putting (Avenue M) on a road diet, we call it, where it’ll be more conducive to pedestrians walking through it and then 9th Street, looking at making that a shared public and traffic allowed on the corridor,” Paul McKeever, one of the lead architects on the project, said.
McKeever is proposing the shared space as a way to integrate the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center cohesively with the rest of downtown, including the 2,400 parking spaces needed to support this plan.
“We’re really focused on particularly the arts district and downtown. So, a lot of what we’re trying to do from a public and urban realm perspective is to open the building up, which is, it’s very introverted now. you could say,” McKeever said.
He believes to make it more extroverted his team will need to create new entrances to face downtown.
“We’ve seen in many other cities where the convention centers, when properly designed and integrated into the urban fabric can really help to boost economic development in the areas around it,” McKeever said.
Mayor Mark McBrayer said this project will use the bones of the civic center to create a new hub for the Hub City.
“It’s going to provide opportunities for, it’s going to provide an attractions for people to come into Lubbock from out of town. It’s also going to continue to allow this building to serve, as it has served for many years, as a community center, a civic center for the citizens of Lubbock, but to have an additional use and a greater use for drawing people to Lubbock,” McBrayer said.
“I go to a lot of cities. I’ve never seen a thriving city with a dying downtown. Lubbock is not there,” McBrayer said.
Funding for this proposal will partially come from the hotel occupancy tax and private funding. It will not come out of the public’s pocket.
“Some of the people say, well, why aren’t we doing more on out streets or our parks or whatever? This money cannot be used for anything but an event center like this. So, it’s a restricted bucket of money, and we either use it for this or we don’t get to use it,” McBrayer said.
Architects are working on incorporating public feedback and putting together a final draft. That will be presented to city council in two weeks.
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