"It's not a Shavano Park solution, something solely for our citizens," Mayor Bob Werner told the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization in August 2025. "It is a solution that serves that central-north core of San Antonio and the surrounding areas."
He was pitching a $1.2 million trailhead that would connect Cliffside Drive to the Salado Creek Greenway, the 20-mile paved trail system that loops through north-central San Antonio. Eight months and one town hall later, the project Planning & Zoning actually recommended to City Council is a $170,000 path with a gate and a fence, built specifically to keep everyone but Shavano Park residents out. The city that asked for regional money is now positioned to build the opposite of what it asked for.
If you live near Cliffside, Bent Oak, or Shavano Creek and have been half-following this through city newsletters and a town hall flyer, here is the full arc, and where it actually stands heading into fall.
The Pitch That Almost Landed
Shavano Park is small: 1.77 square miles, roughly 3,300 residents, 1,263 single-family homes, bounded by Loop 1604 on the north and Huebner Road on the south. It has no direct trail access to the greenway system that wraps much of the rest of north-central San Antonio. The August 2025 grant application was an attempt to fix that in one move.
The scope was substantial. City officials proposed a 5-foot bike path running about 2,057 linear feet from Cliffside Drive to Northwest Military Highway, a 10-foot concrete trail running roughly 3,254 linear feet from Cliffside Drive into the Salado Creek Greenway itself, and a trailhead parking lot near City Hall with benches, bike racks, a water fountain, a dog fountain, and an emergency call box. City Manager Bill Hill told AAMPO the engineering wasn't complicated: "There's no right away or other acquisitions we need to do." The ask needed to clear $1 million to qualify for AAMPO funding, with the metropolitan planning organization covering the bulk of the cost.
What Went Wrong at Citizens-to-Be-Heard
By September, residents were pushing back hard, and many said they'd only just found out. Longtime resident Louise Chumley told the council she discovered the plan online in June and read the grant estimate herself: roughly 30,000 square feet of 10-foot concrete path along the green belt, the removal of multiple 20-inch oak trees, and infrastructure pushed into front yards along Cliffside. Resident Mark Lucio said construction "will inevitably disturb wildlife habitats, remove trees, and increase runoff into the creek." Others raised a specific, practical worry: a parking lot near City Hall could send overflow traffic onto Cliffside itself.
Councilmember Pete Conrad moved to withdraw the grant application, saying the proposal had "turned into something outside of certainly what this council and my belief was." The motion carried. City Manager Hill reminded the room there was "nothing budgeted for any improvements in this year's budget," meaning nothing about the withdrawal touched current city finances. The regional trailhead, at least in that form, was dead within weeks of the mayor's pitch to AAMPO.
A Narrower Assignment, A Longer Runway
Council didn't drop the idea entirely. Instead, it handed Planning & Zoning a much smaller assignment: study only the Cliffside Drive entry point itself, explicitly excluding the trailhead parking lot near City Hall and a separate Windmill Road bike path proposal. Council authorized up to $25,000 for survey and preliminary engineering, drawn from beautification and capital funds rather than property tax revenue. The reporting deadline, initially set for late January, was later pushed to April to give the review more room.
P&Z organized around the neighborhood itself. It formed a four-member subcommittee with Chairman Kyle Horlen representing The Estates, and Commissioners Bill Thorpe representing Cliffside Road, Zach Taylor representing Bent Oak, and Terrin Enssle representing Shavano Creek. Separately, a Citizens Advisory Panel of eight residents was chosen from 19 applicants, most of whom the city said were supportive of some kind of improvement.
Three Designs, One Winner, One Catch
The subcommittee's work culminated in a March 18, 2026 town hall at Shavano Park City Hall. Sixty-two people showed up, and 42 completed an online survey. Three design options were on the table, and every one of them included the same feature: a fence and gate restricting the path to Shavano Park residents only.
| Option | Surface | Width | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Concrete | 10 feet | Matches the Salado Creek Greenway's own width; classified as a shared-use path for bikes and walkers passing each other |
| B | Concrete | 6 feet | Similar to a standard sidewalk; won 54.76% town hall support |
| C | Loose gravel | 6 feet | Nature-trail surface; higher long-term maintenance |
Option B won, and on April 1, 2026, the Planning & Zoning Commission voted unanimously to forward it to City Council with a construction estimate of $170,000, gate and fence included. The concrete would be tinted light brown to blend with the tree line and finished with a brush and rock-salt texture for wet-weather traction. A final decision was scheduled for the April 27, 2026 City Council meeting.
Where the Money and the Gate Actually Point
Line up the two numbers and the shift is stark. The city asked AAMPO for $1.2 million to build a connector meant, in the mayor's own words, to serve "that central-north core of San Antonio and the surrounding areas." What Planning & Zoning ultimately recommended costs about seven times less and does the opposite: it locks out everyone who isn't a Shavano Park resident. The regional solution became a private one, and it happened because residents said so, loudly, at a single citizens-to-be-heard session.
The funding mechanics matter too. Because the $25,000 engineering study and the $170,000 build both draw from the Community Enhancement and Engagement Fund rather than property tax revenue, the project's cost to individual homeowners was never really the sticking point. The sticking point was always who gets to walk through the gate.
As of the most recent update on the city's own hike-and-bike project page, there is still no construction timetable, even after the April 27 council meeting where a final decision was expected. Residents heading into fall 2026 have a recommended design, a rough cost, and a funding source, but no confirmed start date.
The fight also became a small campaign issue in its own right. In this spring's city council race, one candidate listed her recent service on the Cliffside subcommittee as a qualification for office, a sign that a debate over 3,254 feet of trail had become a genuine local political credential in a city of roughly 3,300 people.
If you live along Cliffside, Bent Oak, or Shavano Creek and want to talk through what a gated trail, a fence line, or a future easement might mean for your specific lot, Binkan Cinaroglu has been following Shavano Park's public process as closely as its market. Request a private consultation to talk through what's actually happening on your street.
