With redevelopment of the San Antonio River nearing completion, Bexar County is turning its attention to San Pedro Creek.

Natives used its springs 12,000 years ago, and Spaniards established a presidio on it in 1718 near what's now City Hall. Despite that legacy, the creek was relegated to a narrow culvert decades ago, its ecosystem obliterated for the sake of downtown flood control.

The Commissioners Court on Tuesday plans to reverse the fortunes of San Pedro Creek. Backed by a court majority, County Judge Nelson Wolff will propose a $175 million ecosystem restoration on a 1½-mile segment of the 3-mile-long creek.

“We think it's a great project,” Wolff told the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board on Monday.

The court will seek engineering designs now that a $760,000 study has concluded that the project is challenging yet doable. Officials want the creek to be a linear urban park, retaining its flood control role while providing new recreational amenities like those on the San Antonio River's Museum Reach and Mission Reach.

Right of way would have to be acquired, and myriad stakeholders would need to be consulted, but construction could start in 2016. By 2018, the creek would have walkways, landscaping and perhaps a performance venue in the stretch, which runs from near Fox Tech High School to South Alamo Street.

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“The court demonstrated through their work on the Museum Reach and Mission Reach that flood control projects can be done in a way that not just saves lives but actually enhances the quality of life for everyone who touches it,” County Manager David Smith said.

He said the county has $125 million available to launch the effort.

Commissioner Paul Elizondo, who has childhood memories of swimming and fishing in the creek, said “that part of town deserves more than a concrete-lined creek.” Its current state “in no way reflects the importance of this creek to the history of our city, state and nation.”

“What really excites me about this design is how uniquely San Antonian the look and feel of these beautiful public spaces could be,” Elizondo added.

Wolff, too, views the creek as “really more historic than even the San Antonio River. ... The Spanish settlers lived around the creek rather than the river.”

But that was long before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers redesigned the river and tributaries using concrete channels to avert downtown flooding.

“We know what they did to the creek. It's exactly what they did to the San Antonio River: made it more into a drainage ditch,” Wolff said.

“There's no habitat in the creek today,” said Suzanne Scott, general manager of the San Antonio River Authority. Lush flora and fauna that settlers described “obviously has been destroyed.”

The county has spent more than $200 million to undo similar concrete work on the Mission Reach and to restore its ecosystem. The grand opening for that completed 8-mile project is Aug. 17.

Engineering designs for the San Pedro Creek Improvements Project would cost about $10 million, Wolff said, “and then we estimate — give or take — $175 million to do the project.”

Consultants Pape-Dawson Engineers and Muñoz & Co., who conducted the feasibility study, said their concepts come from the emerging development style of Latino Urbanism.

“Blurring the lines of indoor and outdoor, Latino Urbanism synthesizes the common and the exquisite ... (and) encourages the strategic use of shade, small pocket spaces and gathering spots,” their report said.

jgonzalez@express-news.net