The Early Town Center Project is gaining momentum and during a meeting of the Early City Council this week, they approved two agenda items dealing with the project.

The council unanimously approved entering into a consulting agreement with Legacy Lakes and Land for the Early Town Center pond project, for an amount not to exceed $5,000. (More information on the pond is contained further down the page in this story.)

After a brief executive session, the City Council also unanimously approved proceeding with Right-of-Way acquisition at 106 ½ Early Blvd.

“The Council approved the acquisition, basically a land exchange for right-of-way, from the owner of the property that everybody knows as La Botana.  That’s owned by a property owner that’s not from this area.  We’re purchasing about 4,000 square feet of that property and selling about 8,000 square feet of our property.  The idea of that is to square off a right-of-way that is going up into the new Town Center Project.  We’ve been working on that contract for a while, so we finally got that closed up and ready to move forward with building a road now,” said Tony Aaron, Early City Administrator.

A major focal point of the Town Center Project is a lakeside recreational area with a playground, benches, picnic tables and two fishing piers.  The current pond (shown in the photo) will be expanded and turned into a place where the public can fish.  The lake will also run alongside the commercial/residential development that makes up the Town Center.

The City of Early has been approved to receive a large grant from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

“We’re really pleased to receive notification that we received a grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife on a program called The Habitat Angler Access Program.  We received $50,000 of grant funds and they are putting in $45,000 of internal funds and those funds will be used in the pond for the Town Center to put in two fishing piers that will be lighted for the public to have access to fish in that pond,” said Aaron.

The deadline for the City of Early to have the pond ready is the summer of 2023.  Aaron added that the Texas Parks and Wildlife will stock the pond with catfish in the summer and trout in the winter with the bait fish needed to support the population.  Other fish, such as perch, will also be added to the Town Center pond.  “We will also be adding more fish in there as we need to just to make sure that everybody has a really good high catch rate.  We want people to go to the Early Town Center pond to catch fish, not just fish for them,” Aaron added.

Access to the property and future Town Center will exist in the near future.  The City of Early has employed Volkert Engineering to design a street being called “Kelcy Way” Named after a family of long term residence to the City of Early and long term owners of the property, Kelcy Way will begin off of the Old May road behind the Cefco gas station.  It will continue along the back of several business on Early Blvd. and provide those businesses with another route for the customers to access them.  The road will end behind Humphry Pete’s with a large public 100+ parking lot. The lot will provide overflow parking for area businesses and will also be the parking of the recreational area of the property.  Additionally, another new road will be built between O Riley’s and La Botana that will connect Early Blvd. and the newly constructed Kelcy Way.  Construction plans are expected to be completed this summer with construction of the roads to begin as soon as late summer or early fall.  The estimated cost of construction is yet to be determined, but It should be noted that it will be paid for with sales tax generated from the growing and outstanding local economy of Early, Texas, according to the City of Early website.

Above is an architectural rendering of the Early Town Center Project.  Next comes road construction while at the same time work will be done on the pond project.