Wichita seeks state grant to expand parking lot near three major attractions

Wichita is seeking state transportation funding to build a parking lot, walking path and crosswalk near Exploration Place. And the city is hoping it will also help make up for lost parking near the Mid-America All-Indian Museum.

The total cost is estimated at $945,000. The city and Exploration Place would each cover 20% of the cost, or $189,000, and the Kansas Department of Transportation would cover the other 60%, or $567,000. The city won’t know until spring 2024 if it is awarded the money.

The project would expand the Exploration Place parking lot to the west, paving over undeveloped green space to add 106 surface parking spaces.

It would also add 1,500 feet of 6-foot-wide sidewalk running parallel to the north of McLean from the entrance of Exploration Place to the Seneca Street Bridge, connecting the parking lot to the Mid-America All-Indian Museum across the bridge. A 2-foot tall concrete barrier between the street and the walking path would be built to protect pedestrians.

Halfway between Seneca and Second on McLean, the city would install a signalized crosswalk near the parking lot, allowing pedestrians to cross to travel toward the Advanced Learning Library and Delano neighborhood.

City Council member Maggie Ballard, whose district includes the project area, said the state funding would be a big win for the city and Exploration Place. It would also help accommodate more visitors to the Keeper of the Plains.

But Ballard, who is a member of the Mid-America All-Indian Center Board of Trustees, said she’s most excited to add parking for the museum, which she said is important for the survival of the museum.

“For me, while this is obviously really great in a lot of different ways, for Exploration Place, especially, but also for the Indian Museum because they lost all their parking across the street, and for the last several months, they’ve been sharing the parking lot with Exploration Place. . . . It’s been working out pretty well, but this will just help if we both have events on the same night or something like that.”

The museum had the bulk of its parking spaces — 260 stalls directly across the street near the Wichita Art Museum — closed by the city earlier this year because of structural deficiencies. That parking lot sits atop the city’s emergency drinking water storage basins.

In its application for funding, the city says the parking lot would provide “a crucial solution to an unexpected parking crisis that has recently arisen” at the American Indian museum. If museum-goers parked in the new lot and used the new sidewalk, they would still face a more than quarter-mile walk to reach the museum entrance.

The project has an anticipated completion date of June 14, 2024. It’s another piece of a planned $22 million Exploration Place expansion that includes a riverfront amphitheater and a destination playscape.

Exploration Place officials say the improvements could increase visitors to the science museum from 363,047 last year to more than a million a year by 2027.

“The project aims to manage an anticipated 175% surge in visitor traffic to Exploration Place’s expanded 19.4-acre riverfront property, while also providing a crucial solution to an unexpected parking crisis that has recently arisen at MAAIM,” the city’s KDOT application says.

The ultimate goal of the project is safety, according to the application and Ballard.

“I know that people just jaywalk like crazy but so many people have been getting hit by cars,” Ballard said. “So hopefully this will help slow cars down and make the whole area safer for everyone.”