Maybe you didn't go out into cold wet rain last night but I did with my winter coat and camera in hand ready to capture the opening of the brand spanking new McKinney Avenue Transit Authority Turntable. Its a project long in the works for the volunteer run McKinney Avenue Transit Authority and is one of the few streetcar turntables outside of San Francisco. This is not your average transit stop a combo of DART Station and street car stop make it quite a effective transportation hub for the Uptown area. In fact they even named the shared transit space Uptown Station to make it easier for people to identify where they are when they visit this new local attraction.
The wood and steel turntable is surrounded by soaring modern columns of concrete with wood and glass shelters providing cover for the numbers of people sure to watch the trolley cars spin like they used to when street cars kept Dallas on the move. It certainly is nothing old fashioned with animated color changing LED lights built into the columns adding a whole other element to catching the trolley at this newly minted destination.
West Village developers hope to attract even more development around the new Uptown Station and already have a contract with
Forest City, known as the developer who converted the Mercantile building in Downtown, to build a dense tower of residential, office space and retail sooner rather than later on the spot where Hank Haney Golf Center used to sit. Other improvements to the area include additional public outdoor sculpture, three new public plazas spaciously placed around the West Village and two smaller streets were extended across the former golf center site to add needed parallel parking and better connectivity for future development near and around the station.