Denton’s 1977-built senior center sits inside a 100-year FEMA floodplain, where major storms could bring three feet of water into the building, according to the city’s director of capital projects. That flood risk, combined with cramped space at the South Branch Library, pushed the Denton City Council to unanimously direct staff this week to move forward with brand-new locations for both facilities.
The council’s decision, made during a work session, sends the senior center to a 16.2-acre city-owned site near Mack Park and the South Branch Library to a 14.4-acre city-owned site on Ryan Road, as reported by dentonrc.com. Both projects trace back to a 2023 voter-approved bond, and Community Impact reported the bond provides $96.5 million for the two projects combined, according to the seed report from Community Impact. Seth Garcia, Denton’s director of capital projects, presented council members with four options for using the bond funds before the vote.
Why the Current Buildings No Longer Work
The senior center currently sits on a 2.5-acre property downtown near Quakertown Park, where it shares onsite parking with the Civic Center pool, per Community Impact’s reporting. Garcia told council that remodeling in place would require extensive and expensive flood-proofing to meet city codes and would close the center for 12 to 15 months, while the property also suffers from a lack of reliable underground utility records. Council member Suzi Rumohr said relocating and expanding the senior center would also ease the ongoing competition for parking with pool users, and that the move could eventually let the city renovate and expand the Civic Center pool or add parking there instead.
The South Branch Library faces its own space crunch. Built in 1994 on a 2.8-acre parcel on Teasley Lane, the branch was expanded in 2009 to 21,000 square feet, nearly doubling its size, Garcia said. But the voter-approved Proposition G calls for growing the library to about 40,000 square feet, and Garcia said the existing parcel simply cannot accommodate a building that size along with the outdoor programming space and parking the project requires. The current site also lacks adequate underground utility records, mirroring the senior center’s documentation problem.
Options Council Considered Before Choosing Separate Sites
Garcia’s four options ranged from building a combined senior center and library on Ryan Road, to expanding and renovating both facilities at their current sites, to acquiring and converting existing commercial buildings elsewhere in the city. City staff had previously floated co-location as a way to save money, noting that placing the senior center with the library on Ryan Road could create operational synergies, according to a separate dentonrc.com report. Mack Park had also been floated as a more central option for the senior center, though staff flagged parking capacity there as a potential issue…