Commercial Roofing Contractors in McKinney, TX

"I get 50 to 100 calls during the course of a week," said Mayor Henry Lessner of Fairview. "We are the ones impacted by the noise and pollution..."

MCKINNEY, Texas — On Monday night, McKinney Mayor George Fuller took questions from the public on the $200 million bond to expand the McKinney National Airport.

But he's not the only mayor taking questions as of late.

"I get 50 to 100 calls during the course of a week," said Fairview Mayor Henry Lessner. "We are the ones impacted by the noise and pollution generated by that airport."

Fairview is the closest city to the runway. Lessner took WFAA to the gated and retired community of Heritage Ranch, which sits along McKinney National's flight path.

Mayor Jim Olk of the city of Lucas is also a vocal opponent to an expansion of the airport. His city sits several miles from the runway and the city of McKinney.

"People trying to get from south of the airport to the airport from the north is going to be tremendous and it's going to go right through our neighborhoods," said Olk. "To me they're putting the cart before the horse. They should have done a study about what is the impact regionally."

Mayors Lessner and Olk said they've fielded calls over the last several weeks from residents concerned about noise and traffic. Both went to a bond meeting hosted by McKinney, where area mayors were invited to attend and learn more about the project.

Mayor Fuller of McKinney said people need to see the bigger picture. Fuller said it not only has an economic impact but answers transportation and mobility issues.

"The airport is an opportunity to have a transformative impact to the region," Fuller said to a group of residents who showed up to Monday's Q&A meeting. "The airport is going to expand... this is not a vote to decide if there are planes or no planes. Environmental impact studies have to be done, have been done, and approved by the FAA that make sure traffic is not an issue, air or ground, noise is not an issue."

McKinney voters will decide on the $200 million general issuance bond on the May 6 election. Another $100 hundred million is expected to come from McKinney's EDC and CDC.

Plans for the airport, at the onset, are slated to be four gates working 12 flights a day and serving 550,000 people a year.

Lessner and Olk said there's nothing personal about their opposition to the bond and airport expansion. The two have worked with the city of McKinney on other topics.

"We agree 99% of the time," said Lessner.

"I know that is being sold on the economic impact it will supposedly have in the region. I have seen the numbers and the studies and frankly I don't see this small passenger terminal having much of an impact at all. If a third regional passenger airport is needed, there is a better alternative up in Grayson County - the North Texas Regional Airport," read a letter from Lessner to the city of McKinney.

Fuller touts the potential economic impact of a regional airport to the area. He said it would have a $1 billion impact yearly.

WFAA presented the mayors' environmental concerns to Fuller. He said, "We're working with the FAA on amending the flight path where it will not be over Heritage Ranch and the communities being very vocal and have the concerns."

"I have been an outspoken advocate for passenger service. The economic impact is enormous, travel convenience is enhanced, new commercial and entertainment business relocations would be incentivized with a passenger service presence, and the resulting boost in tourism and consequent benefit to our shops, retail, hotels, etc., are all drivers for me," said Fuller in a social media message.

There's nothing personal here, just three leaders fighting for their constituents. Both the cities of Fairview and Lucas have sent letters to McKinney voicing opposition to the bond.

"This is our residents and this is their life," said Lessner.

Fuller said the bond vote is just one step and added the expansion of the airport is inevitable.

Customers browse popular items: a dozen eggs for $3.89, fresh nopalitos for 69 cents a pound and chicken drumsticks for $1.19 a pound. Many will walk home with their items from Jubilee Food Market, a neighborhood grocery store that they rely on for healthy, affordable food.

It sits in the middle of one of North Waco’s poorest ZIP codes, an area the U.S. Department of Agriculture classifies as a food desert — a low-income area where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food and where a significant number of them live more than 1 mile in urban areas or 10 miles in rural areas from the nearest supermarket.

“The fun part of the grocery store is you get to see neighbors that otherwise would have nowhere to shop walking from the apartment complex down the street up to the grocery store with a great big ol’ smile on their face,” said John Calaway, executive director of Mission Waco, the nonprofit organization that covers the store’s losses.

Scott Elliott wants to bring something similar to the food desert in McKinney, which is the largest city by area and population in wealthy Collin County, according to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, which relies on population data based on the 2010 census. The desert covers the majority of the 75069 ZIP code in East McKinney.

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At the end of 2021, Elliott — a former McKinney City Council member, former director of Community Lifeline Center and now director of the nonprofit One Heart McKinney — and A.J. Micheletto, director of programs at Love Life Foundation, started researching what it would be like to put a grocery store in McKinney’s food desert.

The duo visited three grocery stores that had been built in food deserts — Jubilee Food Market in Waco, Oasis Fresh Market in Tulsa, Okla., and Carver Neighborhood Market in South Atlanta, Ga. — to study commonalities and best practices. Things they saw that worked well: models between 10,000 and 12,000 square feet; stores that included a cafe; stores accepted government assistance programs like SNAP and WIC; stores that had economically diverse shoppers; and the ability to deliver groceries, Elliott said.

Markets like Jubilee can point to ways to successfully open and sustain a grocery store in such areas: The 6,500-square-foot store relies on strong community relationships, local suppliers and growers, and unique approaches to attract buyers from outside the neighborhood to keep its doors open and serve a community that lacks access to affordable, healthy food options.

Rooted in community

Jimmy Dorrell opened Jubilee Market in 2016. Dorrell, who co-founded and is president emeritus of Mission Waco, has lived in the neighborhood where the store is located since 1978 when he and his wife, Janet, bought a 4,000-square-foot house for $12,000. The neighborhood was “messy,” Dorrell said. Prostitutes and crack-dealers were commonplace. Yet, it’s where the couple raised four kids and formed key community ties.

“Everybody in the neighborhood knows who he is,” Calaway said.

The couple built a basketball court on the property where kids would flock and teenagers would challenge each other to games. Neighborhood moms would come by to summon their kids for dinner.

“Everything we did was sort of a bottom-up approach, which is the way we work, so listening to the neighborhood is very key to our model,” Dorrell said. “As we built relationships throughout the years the mamas in particular kept saying, ‘Please help us find a way to get a place to buy healthy affordable food.’”

Bigger grocery stores sat on the edges of town, and people in the neighborhood either had to walk 2.2 miles to the closest H-E-B or buy food at the neighborhood convenience store that also sold cigarettes and lottery tickets. In 2015, Mission Waco purchased the convenience store, which used to be a Safeway that left the neighborhood in the ‘60s, for around $130,000.

Dorrell rallied 65 neighbors who spent hours at the old, deteriorating store imagining what it could be.

“They came up with 12 choices,” Dorrell said. “Out of those 12, they voted and 77% wanted it to be a healthy and affordable grocery store.”

After about six months of renovation, the store opened, and Dorrell made sure to keep the focus on the wants and needs of the community. He hired staff from the neighborhood and stocked the shelves with their requests: oxtails, pig ears, corn husks for tamales, cabrito and Blue Bell ice cream. The neighborhood is 50.3% Hispanic, 28.3% Black and 19.5% white, according to census data.

“Embracing people from the community matters,” Dorrell said. “It feels like it’s their store.”

Keeping the shelves stocked

But even with strong community relationships, one of the biggest challenges to keeping a market-style grocery store open in a food desert is finding funds to make up for losses.

Grocery stores aren’t established in a food desert to turn a profit, said Jeremy Everett, executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty. It’s a “mission-driven” endeavor.

“There’s a reason why the H-E-Bs and the Sam’s [Clubs], the Walmarts, these big chain grocery stores aren’t going into food deserts, because the margins are slim to begin with and people are not spending,” Calaway said.

When Jubilee first opened, people spent about $8.75 per transaction, Dorrell said. Many qualified for the discount programs offered by the store, and shoppers bought for the next day or next couple of days compared to the average middle-class customer who typically shops for the whole week in one trip, Calaway said.

In 2022, the average sale was about $10.77 with 52,705 annual transactions. Yet, the store is not self-sustaining. General contributions to Mission Waco, which funds 18 different programs inspired by the needs in the community with an annual budget of $4.2 million, have offset the loss.

The single most significant loss at the store comes from its rewards program, Calaway said. For every $10 a customer spends, they get $1 back. He said the model is essential to helping people in the neighborhood afford healthy groceries.

“Eventually we will probably need to see some significant subsidy from a third party, whether that’s a city resource or private donor,” Calaway said. “But for it to be self-sustaining, it’s just really, really challenging because profit margins are so slim.”

To make up for some losses, Jubilee uses local suppliers and works to attract people who live outside of the neighborhood to shop there, too.

While the majority of products come from a supplier in Houston, a variety of local vendors, including many at the downtown farmer’s market, give Jubilee deals, and Urban REAP, a part of Mission Waco, has an aquaponics system that provides fresh produce for the store.

Selling products people would normally see at the farmer’s market at a lower rate has helped attract middle-class customers who typically spend more during a shopping trip. The store has also leveraged its proximity to Baylor University through marketing to students, and they’re working with area churches to draw in a wider customer base.

Lessons learned

Based on visiting Jubilee, Oasis and Carver Market, potential plans for the market that Elliott wants to bring to East McKinney include a 10,000- to 12,000-square-foot full-service grocery store with a cafe and a place where the community can gather not only to shop but also to participate in community events and sell their own wares. He pictures an L shaped building that will create a shaded, communal courtyard space.

“Anybody that’s looking to start a grocery store like this has to be creative with what is in there and the space, but also be very strategic about what you’re providing and how much it’s costing the folks that are coming in there,” Calaway said. “And then be real careful to track what you’re doing to make sure it’s making an impact.”

Elliott said it would be important to offer a delivery option and SNAP and WIC benefits as well as a loyalty card to provide additional discounts to qualifying customers.

Micheletto and Elliott have identified a name: “McKinney Market.” Now, they are focused on getting certification to officially form a legal entity, registering for federal and state identification numbers as well as finding out if the land they originally considered is still available.

“There’s risk. You got to do it for the long haul,” Dorrell said. “You got to know you’re going to lose money for awhile. You have to have a good connection to the neighborhood. But access to healthy, affordable food is a worthy project worth risking for.”

Related:Granted clemency by Obama, McKinney native leases store where he used to sell drugs

MCKINNEY (CBSNewsTexas.com) - McKinney residents are deciding whether to approve a multi-million-dollar bond package that would fund a big portion of the city's airport expansion plan and bring commercial travel to the area.

Tonight, Mayor George Fuller hosted a question-and-answer session. Residents learned more about the $200 million dollar bond package on the ballot.

"I fear residents are making a decision.. potentially making a decision.. not based in fact, but misinformation," Fuller said.

"Frisco has Universal Studios, the Cowboys, that's not the kind of development we want," resident Al Perry said. "This is the secret sauce."

"I am completely against it," resident Lee Moore said. "I think that the numbers don't add up in any way, shape, or form."

The bond would fund most of the city's airport expansion plan. At first, opening four new gates, a new taxi way and parking. Mayor Fuller estimates in its first year, it would operate about 12 commercial flights a day.

"There's going to be service out of there anyway, and I think we should take advantage of it," resident Tim Lowe said.

Some who live nearby are worried about traffic, noise and pollution, especially given there's the possibility of future expansion up to 16 gates.

"The FAA then reviews that environmental assessment," he said. "All those things have to be acceptable. On traffic, we're talking about 1,000 cars a day. We're about to open an HEB with about 25,000 people on a given Saturday."

Fuller said the info has been made public on FlyMcKinney.com.

If passed, city officials say this expansion could bring more than 2,000 jobs to the area and more than $600 million in economic impact.

Erin Jones

Raised in Richardson, Erin Jones is proud to call North Texas home. Her passion for journalism began in elementary school. For a 5th grade graduation memory book, she was asked what do you want to be when you grow up? She wrote journalist.

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Dixie Perkins pulls a ticket from the red box to secure her place in line — number 41. A woman from inside the building shouts “27″ in English and again, in Spanish.

“Oh wow I got 20 more to go,” Perkins, 69, said. She walks to a bench and sits to wait.

About 15 other people wonder when their number will be called. They lean against the walls, sit in their cars, on benches or pace the sidewalk. They crane their heads to watch others who’ve waited their turn to walk inside and fill out a form before getting a cart to shop.

Community Food Pantry in McKinney sits west of State Highway 5, just outside the city’s food desert, an area where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food, and a significant number of residents are more than 1 mile in urban areas or 10 miles in rural areas from the nearest supermarket, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). These areas often have large proportions of households with low incomes and inadequate access to transportation.

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McKinney’s food desert covers the majority of the 75069 ZIP code in East McKinney. According to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas — where population data is based on the 2010 census — it’s the largest food desert by area and population in Collin County, which is also one of the wealthiest counties in the state behind Midland, Travis and Kendall counties, according to consumer finance website SmartAsset. It identifies the wealthiest counties by comparing investment income, property value and per capita income and calculating each county’s median home value using IRS Statistics of Income tax information, National Association of Realtors and Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

A few restaurants, two Dollar Generals and fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Baker’s Drive-In and Jack in the Box — are located in the desert. The closest supermarket is an El Rancho Supermercado, which has limited options and high prices, said Justin Beller, a District 1 McKinney City Council member, who shops at El Rancho for certain Hispanic grocery items but doesn’t rely on the store for staple foods.

Area leaders working to mitigate the impacts of the food desert say the disparity — a large food desert in the midst of one of the state’s wealthiest counties — comes from a lack of awareness that the desert even exists, as need is overshadowed by the overall wealth of the area, and attracting grocery stores has been a challenge as East McKinney has historically lagged behind the city in development and population.

Masked need

Ronisha Trammell sometimes eats chips for dinner so that she has enough food for her two kids. Like many who live in the food desert, she often wonders where the next meal is coming from.

About 11% of the city’s overall population, or 14,497 people, lived in the two low-income, low-access census tracts that made up the food desert in 2010. Over the past decade, McKinney’s population has grown by over 64,000 people, meaning the number of those living in the food desert has likely grown too.

At a recent mobile food distribution organized by area nonprofit Community Lifeline Center, Trammell got almonds, eggs, milk, potatoes, onions and a box of canned goods. She was close to the front in a line of cars that snaked through the McKinney ISD Stadium parking lot. The nonprofit was expecting to serve about 100 families.

Instead, about 500 cars pulled up that afternoon, and food options dwindled to onions or almonds.

With pandemic-era emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits ending this March, along with inflation and rent increases, need has exploded, said Michael Schwerin, executive director of Community Lifeline Center.

In 2020 the organization distributed 750,000 pounds of food, but in 2022, it topped 1 million pounds. Schwerin said the majority of families it serves live in the food desert.

The need is clear, said Danelle Parker, who oversees Texas Health Resources’ community health improvement programs in Collin County. But with a poverty rate of 6.6%, the pocket of people who have the greatest need is often overshadowed by the overall wealthy population within the city.

For example, while McKinney’s median household income was $106,437 in 2021, compared with the state’s $67,321, the 75069 ZIP code in McKinney was ranked as having the highest need compared with other cities in Collin County when measuring food access correlated with economic and household hardship, according to the 2022 Food Insecurity Index, created by Conduent Healthy Communities Institute.

Parker said looking beyond the health equity index and the percent of those living below the poverty level to understand need and how a desert exists is key.

“That’s how you have a food desert, because it’s not something that’s highlighted,” said Parker. “The people that have need are not highlighted.”

Out of sight

After waiting 55 minutes to shop, Perkins fills her cart with bottles of water, a toilet paper roll, and cans of whole kernel corn, Golden Hominy, green beans, pink salmon and white chicken. She reads the label on a pack of gummy rabbits and adds it to the haul. From a small freezer at the end of the winding aisles, she grabs a boneless beef angus chuck for a roast she wants to cook.

The groceries are bagged and loaded into the car by Community Food Pantry volunteers while Perkins sits in the passenger seat. Like many in the area without transportation, she has to rely on her neighbor or rides from an on-demand voucher program operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

On the five-minute drive home, Perkins passes Arcade 92 Retro Arcade Bar + Kitchen, Koji Sushi and El Juarez Mexican, restaurants that border the west side of the food desert and mark the entrance of the city’s historic downtown where high-end restaurants, boutiques and wineries sprawl. Most who live in the desert can’t afford to eat here.

Later in the week, after her SNAP benefits become available, Perkins will catch another ride to Kroger on University Drive, where U.S. highways 75 and 380 intersect.

It’s in a shopping center — with a Walmart Supercenter, WinCo Foods and Sam’s Club — across from State Highway 5 and the food desert. About 3 miles south on 75 are a Trader Joe’s and an Albertsons. A Sprouts Farmers Market may also be coming to the southwest corner of 75 and Virginia Parkway, according to discussion during a Jan. 17 City Council meeting.

Because of the plethora of stores along 75, many area residents don’t realize that the food desert exists, said Joy Hinkelman, executive director of the Wellness Center for Older Adults, who has lived in West McKinney since 2007 and didn’t know a food desert existed in the city until 2018.

“I’m one of those individuals that hasn’t had the reason to go on the east side because everything I need, that I access is on the west side. ... If they [residents] don’t see it, then they’re not going to recognize it and acknowledge it,” Hinkelman said.

Is a grocery store the answer?

While there are no zoning barriers to developing a grocery store along State Highway 5/McDonald Street or U.S. Highway 380, preliminary data from Retail Connection — a company hired by the city to pull market data — shows that the customer base and the spending power isn’t there for a grocery store to be located, said assistant city manager Kim Flom.

Stores like Aldi and neighborhood Walmarts don’t see the area along Highway 5 as a viable service area: Until recently, there has been little development pressure east of Highway 5. The highway is not heavily trafficked; the east fork of the Trinity River limits space and the area has a limited demographic that it serves, Beller said.

“[Grocery stores] looked to 75 and 380 and decided they could serve the population from there,” Beller said. “They’re chasing traffic counts and population demographics.”

City leaders say a brick-and-mortar store might not be the answer to mitigating the impact of the food desert.

Beller pointed to leaning on the nonprofit sector to help provide better price, convenience and selection through using existing retail facilities and distribution models.

Flom said that the data from the USDA is an important indicator, but the city needs to “take a deeper dive” to combine the USDA information about the food desert with local-level information.

“This will provide a comprehensive view that will lead to tailored recommendations to best meet the needs of McKinney residents,” Flom said. “In areas where the private market does not produce a grocery store, other things like food distributions, community gardening, farmers markets and surplus food sharing have been shown to alleviate food desert issues.”

MCKINNEY (CBSNewsTexas.com) — In fast growing McKinney, greenspaces are in big demand. But some residents are finding that feral hogs are making themselves at home in those areas.

"They dig up here...looking for grub," homeowner Ryan Keever said, pointing out the areas hogs have damaged in his front yard.

Keever is the HOA President for The Preserve at Lake Forest and said he's not alone in dealing with the damage.

"Every day, I'm getting emails or videos," Keever said. "They're [the wild hogs] going all the way behind the houses, over to the high school. They're all over."

He's even come face-to-snout with one of the smelly beasts.

"It was right by the trees. I scared it off and it goes right in there," gesturing to the wooded area near his home. "It was big...at least 150 pounds."

The near nightly sightings have left neighbors frustrated and afraid.

"All of the above," homeowner Michelle Hubbard agrees. "I walk my dog every day and I haven't in days because I'm a little bit nervous to do that."

Hubbard has been gathering pictures and videos from neighbors to document the issue while reaching out to the city for help.

In a video posted online as a resource for homeowners, the city says "a lot of that is because we're having a lot of construction...they're moving down the greenbelt and coming into our urban areas."

Still, Hubbard counters that explanations are not solutions.

"Other cities around here...Southlake, Coppell...they've set up some traps. They've dealt with it on some level, and I think that's what we want," she said.

But they'll need to act fast.

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, if left unchecked, a feral hog population can triple in just one year. With no known predators, the hogs will continue to have the upper hand, and the damage to golf courses, lawns and gardens can get costly—quickly.

"McKinney doesn't seem to have a plan for it," Keever continued. "They [the city] gave us a list of companies that would do it for us. We're a small HOA. We can't spend $8,000 to trap some hogs."

For now, residents are pitching in to replant the damaged areas in the neighborhood. But still, they know replanting isn't a long-term solution.

"It's going to happen every night," Keever said. "They're going to different areas...but they're not going away."

Robbie Owens

Robbie grew up in northeast Texas, in a tiny town where her family's history spans six generations.

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