Phoenix Is Turning Its Stretch of Highway 99 Toward Blue Heron Park
"A place to save the riparian areas that often are filled in and developed," is how Pam Thornhill, who chairs the Phoenix Parks and Recreation Committee, described the land the city bought next to Blue Heron Park this summer. She was talking about a lot that held a motel and an RV park until September 2020.
Put that purchase next to the roadwork happening on Highway 99 right now and the two projects line up. Between Oak Street and Cabbage Lane, the city is changing how the highway moves cars and moving the pedestrian crossing. It is also turning a burned commercial lot into public land that, under the terms of its loan, can never go commercial again. The south end of Phoenix used to be a highway with a park beside it. It is becoming a park entrance that a highway passes.
The City of Phoenix posted its Highway 99 road work notice on September 4, 2026, with construction scheduled from September 4 through October 15, 2026. The work covers the corridor from 6th Street to Cabbage Lane:
The city's reasoning comes down to left turns. On the old four-lane section, a driver turning left had to slow or stop in an inside through lane. That left the drivers behind them braking hard or swerving into the next lane, which the city says sets up rear-end, sideswipe and turning crashes. A center turn lane takes the turning car out of the through lane altogether. KDRV has also reported the three-lane, center-turn layout and the pedestrian improvements near the park, with October 15 given as the expected finish. As of early October the schedule still had about two weeks to run, so plan on some lane shifts through mid-month.
The lane change explains the paint. The crosswalk explains the direction. The city isn't adding a second crossing. It is moving the existing one, beacons included, away from Oak Street and down to the new road into Blue Heron Park near Black Bird.
That puts the safest place to cross Highway 99 at the park's front door. If you walk or bike in from the east side, your route into Blue Heron and onto the Bear Creek Greenway now lines up with the park entrance. The city's notice gives the crossing's location but not the access road's design, schedule or funding, so expect more details as that piece is built out.
Volume is the reason the park gets that kind of attention. Mayor Al Muelhoefer told the Rogue Valley Times that Blue Heron is the most-used park on the Bear Creek Greenway, with city surveys counting more than 84,000 users a year.
The 3.5 acres Phoenix bought sit off Highway 99, next to the developed part of Blue Heron and next to Black Bird Ace Hardware. The parcel was once home to the Frontier Lodge and the Dun Rov'n RV Park. Both burned in the 2020 Almeda Fire. A later owner planned a high-end RV park there, but it never got built. The Phoenix Urban Renewal Agency started negotiating for the land in January 2026, and the mayor said the city closed the $1.75 million purchase on June 23.
The detail that matters most for that frontage is in the financing. Muelhoefer said the loan, which will be repaid with tax dollars, prohibits commercial development. For six years that highway-facing lot could have gone back to lodging, RV sites or retail. Now it can't.
The land matters for water, too. Thornhill pointed out that the property borders a wetland that feeds Blue Heron Creek, which was recently reconnected to Bear Creek.
The park is larger on paper than it feels from the parking lot. The figures below come from the city's park page, its 2025 parks master plan update and the mayor's July comments.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total park size, per the city | 24 acres |
| Developed acres before the purchase | 7 |
| Acres added in June 2026 | 3.5 |
| Developed acres once expansion is counted | More than 10 |
| Off-street parking stalls | 46, including 3 ADA |
| Annual users, per city surveys cited by the mayor | More than 84,000 |
| Monthly park fee, before and after the July 2026 increase | $2, then $5.84 |
| Scheduled monthly park fee, July 2027 | $6.17 |
So only about seven of those 24 acres have been the park most people know. That developed part already holds two playgrounds, an amphitheater, a community garden, a pollinator garden, a sand volleyball court, a gazebo, restrooms, picnic tables and covered areas, plus access to the Greenway. If you're looking for an off-leash area, the city's inventory puts the enclosed dog park at Colver Park, not Blue Heron.
The fee line shows up on every resident's bill. Muelhoefer tied the purchase to what residents have said in surveys. "When we survey the people of Phoenix, they are willing to pay more for parks," he told the Rogue Valley Times. "So we felt comfortable buying this land."
Nothing has been decided. Muelhoefer said there is no set timeline for developing the land and that the city will schedule town hall meetings to hear what residents want. The ideas raised so far, mostly from Thornhill:
Some of these pull in different directions. Preserving riparian habitat and building a splash pad call for different designs, and on 3.5 acres beside a wetland, choosing one shapes the rest. Thornhill's own case was about open space. "So many people are living in very small pieces of property these days, and for the kids to be able to come out and cut loose, it's a great resource and it's so heavily used," she said.
Lighting is on the list too. The city's March 2026 strategic plan sets a target of December 2026 for a Bear Creek Greenway lighting plan. That is a planning step, not new fixtures on the trail yet.
The business next to the new parcel already works as part of a park outing. Black Bird's Phoenix store at 4403 S. Pacific Highway has a taproom serving local brews, a dog wash station and a rotating lineup of food trucks. On a fall afternoon, a Greenway walk from Blue Heron, a stop at the dog wash and a pint afterward all happen within one block of highway frontage, with the new crossing at the center.
Head north and the rebuilt downtown fills in the rest of the week:
The city calendar lists a Parks and Recreation Meeting on Thursday, October 15, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Civic Center. The listing doesn't call it a town hall on the Blue Heron expansion, so treat it as a regular committee meeting where the parcel may or may not come up. The dedicated town halls the mayor promised haven't been scheduled yet. October 15 is also the scheduled last day of the Highway 99 work, so on that date the new lanes and the relocated crossing at the park entrance should be in place, and the committee in charge of the park's next 3.5 acres will be meeting a short drive north.
When a city locks highway frontage into parkland and moves its crossing to a park entrance, the change reaches nearby property, from what drivers see to how easily people get to the Greenway. If you own near Blue Heron or along this part of Highway 99 and want to know what that could mean for your home, Leiser Real Estate Group can walk you through it with a local, no-pressure look at your home's value.
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