Shavano Park Walked Away From Its Own Trail Grant

"It's almost shovel ready." That's how City Manager Bill Hill described Shavano Park's plan to connect Cliffside Drive to the Salado Creek Greenway when he pitched it to regional transportation planners in August 2025. The project ranked third out of 47 submissions across the whole Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization region and first among transportation alternatives projects during public feedback. By any normal measure, it was headed for approval.

Then Shavano Park pulled it.

AAMPO's own project records show the city's submittal was left out of the final funding recommendation because of what the agency calls "removal from consideration for funding by the applicant." In plain language: nobody rejected Shavano Park's application. Shavano Park rejected it first.

If you live on Cliffside, Bent Oak, or anywhere in Shavano Creek and have been half-following this story through Nextdoor updates and city emails, that reversal is worth understanding, because it changes what actually gets built and when you'll be able to use it.

The version that almost happened

The original proposal was not a modest one. City documents describe a $1.23 million project built around a full trailhead near City Hall at the intersection of Saddletree Road and Northwest Military Highway, with a 10-foot shared-use path wide enough for cyclists and walkers to pass each other safely. The plan included a parking area, benches, bike racks, a public drinking fountain, a dog fountain, information kiosks, and an emergency call box.

The city asked AAMPO's Transportation Alternatives program to cover 80 percent of construction, with Shavano Park picking up the remaining 20 percent local match plus engineering costs that don't qualify for grant funding. City Council authorized that application unanimously back in February 2025. Mayor Bob Werner told AAMPO the project wasn't just for Shavano Park residents, framing it as a fix for a genuine regional problem: dangerous conditions cyclists and walkers already dealt with getting to the greenway around Northwest Military Highway and the Loop 1604 and Huebner Road entrances, where a lack of parking made access worse. The existing route down to Salado Creek from Cliffside was itself part of the problem. Alderperson Pete Miller would later describe that informal pathway as lacking proper grading and signage, calling it hazardous to navigate, especially for children, seniors, and anyone with mobility challenges.

That's the version that ranked third out of 47 projects. It's also the version that no longer exists.

Why the city walked

The pivot happened at the October 27, 2025 City Council meeting, the same window when AAMPO's process would have locked Shavano Park into whatever timeline and design constraints came with federal grant money. Alderperson Pete Miller moved to narrow the whole project down to just the Cliffside entry point itself, cutting out the City Hall trailhead parking lot and the Windmill Road bike path piece entirely. Council backed the motion unanimously and earmarked $25,000 in local funds, drawn from the city's Community Enhancement and Engagement Fund, for a preliminary survey and engineering concept.

One council member's comment from that meeting captures the logic: the city wanted to make sure it could "take an off ramp any time" it needed to. A federal grant with a defined scope and a multi-year construction window doesn't leave much room for an off ramp. A locally funded project, paid for out of a fund that doesn't touch property taxes, does.

That single choice is the thesis of this whole story. Shavano Park didn't lose a bigger trail to a scoring committee. It traded a bigger, regionally funded trail it couldn't fully control for a smaller one it could build entirely on its own terms.

What residents actually chose

With the AAMPO grant off the table, the project moved to the Planning & Zoning Commission, which formed a subcommittee to run point: Chairman Kyle Horlen representing the Estates, along with Commissioners Bill Thorpe from Cliffside Road, Zach Taylor from Bent Oak, and Terrin Enssle from Shavano Creek. Alongside them, the city stood up a Citizens Advisory Panel, eight residents selected out of 19 applicants, specifically to weigh in on design before anything went to a vote.

That work led to a town hall on March 18, 2026, where staff and the subcommittee laid out three concrete options for residents to react to:

• Option A — a 10-foot-wide concrete trail, the same width as the main Salado Creek Greenway
• Option B — a 6-foot-wide concrete trail, roughly the width of a standard sidewalk
• Option C — a 6-foot-wide natural surface trail using loose gravel

Every option included a fence and gate, with a stated preference for restricting access to Shavano Park residents only.

Sixty-two people showed up. Forty-two filled out the online survey afterward. Option B won, with 54.76 percent support, landing in the middle on both cost and maintenance. Here's how the two versions of this project actually compare:

On April 1, 2026, the Planning & Zoning Commission voted unanimously to close out its review and send Option B forward as its formal recommendation. The report was scheduled to go before City Council on April 27, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. As of the city's last public update on the project page, dated April 7, that presentation was the next scheduled step. If you haven't seen a follow-up announcement since, that tracks. The clearest way to catch the outcome is to watch the city's own project page directly rather than assume it's been decided.

The part that's already on your ballot

This isn't a background planning story that only city staff care about. It became a live campaign issue in the May 2, 2026 municipal election. Five candidates ran for three open alderman seats, and Community Impact asked each of them directly how they'd balance a Cliffside entry point against residents' privacy concerns. One candidate, Christian Lyons, had served on the citizen panel that helped shape the trail's design options and answered from that experience, describing a recessed, limited-length fence with resident-only gate access as the group's recommendation. Another candidate declined to take a position at all, saying any vote should follow whatever residents living closest to the proposed entry actually want.

That range of answers tells you something the design options alone don't: even inside city government, there's no consensus on how open or closed this path should be. The $170,000 version under review keeps that debate manageable in scale. It also means the people elected on May 2 are the ones who'll finalize whatever comes next, so this isn't a settled question so much as a live one that changes with every council seat.

What this means if you're already here

If you bought into Shavano Park expecting a wide, amenity-rich connector to the Salado Creek Greenway, that version isn't happening, at least not on the current timeline or budget. What's in front of Council instead is a narrower, gated, resident-restricted path that costs a fraction of the original ask and comes with none of the parking, fountains, or kiosks once on the table.

For a city that has spent decades limiting commercial development and keeping its footprint quiet by design, that's not really a compromise. It's consistent with how Shavano Park tends to make decisions: slower, smaller, and closer to what residents on Cliffside, Bent Oak, and Shavano Creek actually asked for at a town hall, rather than what a regional funding formula would have handed them.

Whether you're watching this because you walk that stretch of Cliffside every week or because you're weighing what a Shavano Park address means for your own next move, this kind of hyperlocal detail is exactly the sort of thing that doesn't show up on a listing sheet. It's the difference between knowing a neighborhood's address and knowing how it actually runs.

If you're thinking about buying or selling in Shavano Park and want someone who tracks details like this alongside the market itself, Adele Huerta would be glad to help. Schedule a free consultation and let's talk about what's really happening in the neighborhood you're considering.