The Part of Towne Lake Park That Only Makes Sense After Sunset
October 1, 2026
October 1, 2026
Walk the loop at Towne Lake Park after dark this fall and the ground does something the rest of the park never did. A concrete pathway glows along Wilson Creek, laid down in sections through the back half of last year and finished with a ribbon-cutting on December 3, 2025. For a 230-acre park that has spent decades closing its gates at 11 p.m. with nothing but streetlight between the pond and the parking lot, that is a genuinely different kind of investment than anything McKinney has built here before.
Most of the city's recent park spending has gone toward daytime use. A few miles away, EA Randles Park reopened with a new basketball court, a splash pad and upgraded play equipment, the kind of amenities that peak on a Saturday afternoon with kids in tow. Towne Lake's headline addition does the opposite. The Light Walk is built for the hours when a splash pad is useless and a basketball court sits empty, and it gives a park that has sat at 230 acres for years a reason to be visited specifically after the sun goes down.
The Light Walk sits on the Towne Lake Park Loop, a 1.1-mile paved circuit that has always existed but never had a reason to hold anyone past dusk. Now it does. The installation was funded through the McKinney Community Development Corporation alongside parkland dedication funds and city bonds, the same combination the city used to reopen the Recreation Center at Towne Lake around the same stretch of late 2025.
Amy Kinkade, the city's Director of Parks and Recreation, described the goal as keeping the park a place that "delivers a truly unique experience for all users." That framing matters here because Towne Lake was never short on daytime uses. It already had the disc golf course, the sand volleyball courts, the horseshoe pits, the fishing pond. What it didn't have was a version of itself that worked at 8 p.m. in October.
That gap is also why the park's other 2026 addition matters. A dog park is in the design phase, with construction expected to start in early 2026 according to city documents reviewed by Community Impact, and it is on track to carry the name of Bob Tomes, the longtime McKinney business owner and philanthropist who opened Bob Tomes Ford on US 75 in 1983 and died in 2024. Council member Geré Feltus called him "an integral part of McKinney's history" when the naming resolution passed. The plan calls for three separate yards and shade structures, tucked into the same corner of the park that's already absorbing the rest of this investment.
If you haven't been out to Towne Lake in a while, here's what's actually on the ground:
Fishing is allowed on the pond, but Texas Parks and Wildlife rules apply. Anyone 18 or older needs a license, and the daily bag limits and protected length restrictions that govern any Texas pond apply here too.
Towne Lake didn't get singled out by accident. City council received a briefing in November 2025 outlining a broader parks and trails push that runs well past this one location, including regrading and new synthetic fields at Gabe Nesbitt Park and a second phase of construction at McKinney Soccer. Staff told council they planned to issue a request for qualifications on a regional sports complex the following month and to bring a design contract for further Towne Lake improvements to council the month after that.
Towne Lake is the piece of that plan that's furthest along. The Light Walk and the Recreation Center reopening are finished. The dog park is designed and waiting on a construction start. The next design contract for additional Towne Lake work was already queued as of that November briefing. For a resident deciding where to spend an October evening, that means the park closest to being "done" with its current round of upgrades happens to be this one.
None of this requires planning around an event or a festival. The park's posted hours run 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, and the Light Walk doesn't need a special occasion to be worth the drive. A lap on the illuminated loop, a slower pass through the meditation garden along Wilson Creek, or the longer out-and-back to Bonnie Wenk Park are all available on an ordinary Tuesday.
The dog park's construction start was penciled in for early 2026, with three yards and shade structures on the drawings, though the plans reviewed last fall didn't spell out a completion date beyond that. The park that's already finished, with its glowing loop and its reopened Recreation Center, is a different place after dark than it was a year ago.
If watching this stretch of Wilson Creek Parkway turn into the city's most invested-in park has you wondering what that kind of momentum does to values in the neighborhoods around it, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks this market daily. Patricia Weidler and the Weidler Group can walk you through what's actually happening with homes near Towne Lake Park, no pressure, just the numbers.
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