New Universal Kids Park Coming to Frisco, Texas
Universal Kids Resort is a new family-friendly theme park in Texas designed for parents with young children. This post shares details about the rides & characters, updated concept art, details now that the park has an official name, and our commentary about this smaller scale concept and whether Disney might follow suit. (Updated December 1, 2023.)
According to Universal, the new kid park concept is set in a lush green landscape and features themed lands that celebrate Universal’s brand of entertainment, humor, and innovation. The park will bring to life its beloved characters and stories in ways that will wow even the youngest theme park goers.
Universal’s proposed park will be designed to be more intimate and engaging for younger audiences and will be sized for a regional audience. It will be full of family-friendly attractions, interactive and playful shows, character meet and greets, unique merchandise and fun food and beverage venues.
Although smaller in size, it will still carry the same quality as Universal’s other larger resort destinations, according to the company. The concept will be approximately 97 acres in size, as compared to approximately 110 acres for Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida.
However, that’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison, as part of the 97 acres of land purchased by the company, the proposed park also has plans for an adjacent themed hotel and room for expansion. The entire area is intended to have a completely different look, feel, and scale than Universal’s existing parks and will appeal to a new audience for the brand.
Although rumored at this point, the new family-friendly theme park is expected to contain lands based on some of the following movies and characters:
- Trolls by DreamWorks Animation
- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous
- Minions
- Puss in Boots
- Spongebob Squarepants
This list should be fairly unsurprising, as this is basically a list of the most popular family-friendly intellectual property to which Universal has access. Even if we were just guessing, we’d expect at least 4 of those IPs to be in the finished park.
December 1, 2023 Update: Universal Destinations & Experiences officially announced today that this park will be named Universal Kids Resort. This imaginative, original resort brings Universal’s style of storytelling to a new, younger audience. (It’ll be interesting to see whether that’s the name of the entire complex or the park–it would make sense for the former to be the case, and the latter to be called Universal Kids Park.)
Universal Kids Resort will include a theme park featuring immersive lands that celebrate Universal’s entertainment, humor and fun. The family-friendly theme park will feature all ages attractions, interactive and playful shows, unique merchandise, fun food and beverage venues, and character meet and greets. Universal Kids Resort will also offer a 300-room themed hotel giving families a place to stay and to play following their day of adventure.
“Universal Kids Resort will inspire the unbridled creativity of kids through imagination, discovery and most importantly – play,” said Molly Murphy, President, Universal Creative. “We’re designing the resort so kids and families can feel the thrill of being physically immersed in their most beloved stories and characters.”
Set in lush green landscape with a distinctive look, feel and scale specifically for younger children, Universal Kids Resort will deliver the quality the Universal brand is known for worldwide. Along with the announcement of the Universal Kids Resort name, the company also released new concept art (above) that replaces the old art (below). We’re keeping both in this post to illustrate just how much the project has already evolved from announcement to the beginning of construction.
Speaking of which, work on Universal Kids Park is well underway as of December 2023 following a groundbreaking last month. Universal Kids Resort will drive immediate economic impact for the region, creating thousands of jobs including more than 2,500 new construction jobs. Throughout the project, the company will remain focused on ensuring the resort adds value and positively serves the community.
Universal Parks & Resorts selected the city of Frisco, in North Texas, as the area for this new concept given the city’s growing population and ability to attract businesses to the area. The proposed location for the new concept is ideally situated east of the Dallas North Tollway and north of Panther Creek Parkway.
“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with the city of Frisco and Mayor Cheney as we work to bring this innovative, new concept to life designed specifically for a younger generation of Universal fans,” said Page Thompson, President, New Ventures, Universal Parks & Resorts. “We think North Texas is the perfect place to launch this unique park for families given its growing popularity within this part of the country.”
“Frisco is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. and has been recognized as a great place to plant professional roots and raise a family,” said Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney. “This new Universal concept will continue to enhance our tax base, expand employment opportunities and bring even more fun to Frisco benefiting our residents, businesses, and visitors.” According to Universal Parks & Resorts, more details about the Frisco Family Park Project will be revealed over time.
Earlier this year, the City of Frisco’s Planning and Zoning Commission recommended a special use permit for Universal’s Frisco Family Park Project, which was then approved by City Council in a 4-2 vote last night. Also approved was $12.7 million in economic incentives for the project, subject to a range of different triggers. One of the requirements of the economic incentives is for the park to be open by June 2026.
This paved the way for construction to begin, despite pushback from angry residents, most of whom voiced concerns about traffic, crime, decreased property values, and aesthetics. Many appeared in person to plead with the Frisco City Council to delay the vote so their concerns about traffic, crime, and quality of life issues could be properly studied and addressed.
Residents also voiced opinions online by filling out a project input form. The results there were overwhelmingly opposed to Universal’s planned park: 75 people were against the project, 3 were in favor, 6 requested additional information, and 1 asked council to consider a park aimed at a different demo, because one aimed only at young children would be unlikely to survive in the long run.
The residents opposed to the say the final agreement leaves too many loopholes on hours of operation. They also don’t like that city leaders will be getting discounted or free access to the park, which residents believe creates a conflict of interest. Residents also voiced frustration that Universal’s Frisco Family Park will be around for the long-term, but is being rushed through the approval process. (See the planning development documents and studies Frisco has posted about traffic, crime, etc.)
During a final presentation, the city council heard economic impact arguments. Universal contents that the park will generate $3 million per year in sales and property taxes along with more than $1 million annually in hotel taxes while employing around 650 people. A required traffic study revealed Universal’s Frisco Family Park will draw about 7,500 weekday visitors on average. On peak days, including certain weekends and holidays, the theme park will have up to 20,000 visitors.
The developer will provide canopy trees, shrubbery, and berming that will screen perimeter fencing and enhance the area with lush green landscape. However, critics contend that 12′ trees are not going to properly conceal 80′ structures located in Universal’s Frisco Family Park. To address residents’ safety concerns, the Frisco Police Department will partner with Universal prior to opening to help determine how many officers will be needed and what services will be provided by police and security officers.
Now that the project has been approved by City Council, angered residents who believe it was simply rubber-stamped have promised to continue their fight. The next step is getting enough signatures for a referendum on Universal’s Frisco Family Park. That’s an uphill battle, and one that seems destined to fail.
Never say never, though. Look no further than Disney’s America for a ‘case study’ in locals getting theme parks cancelled. That’s one of several “Disney Decade” projects that were met with fierce opposition in the 1990s and now exist primarily in the pages of coffee table books about unbuilt Imagineering plans.
Our Commentary
In the original press release, Universal introduced this new concept by calling it a “one-of-a-kind theme park, unlike any other in the world, specifically designed to inspire fun.” We deleted that line because there’s nothing in the concept art or official details to suggest it’s true. (This is no knock at Universal–a lot of inaccurate or misleading marketing puffery gets deleted from Disney releases, too.)
It’s tough to say what this will end up being once it goes from concept to reality. Right now, it sounds a lot to us like LEGOLAND, but swapping out those iconic bricks for different intellectual properties. Those are solid parks for what they are, offering tremendous appeal and value for families on a smaller scale.
In our view, this is a brilliant move by Universal. There’s a ton of unsatisfied demand for regional theme parks from families who either don’t want–or can’t afford–to take weeklong vacations to the flagship resorts. Destination theme park complexes are not for everyone, and there are multiple barriers to entry for Universal Orlando and Walt Disney World.
Cost is obviously one, stamina is another, and so is a desire to dedicate vacation time to theme parks. There are probably several other reasons many families don’t consider trips to Central Florida’s complexes. I’m hardly the one to lay out the argument against visiting Orlando, as I cannot relate!
Regional parks are easier as a long weekend getaway with lower stakes. They may not offer the same degree of all-ages appeal and excitement, but they’re also cheaper and easier. Lower reward, but lower risk. In short, they fill an important niche.
With this announcement by Universal, the big question for many theme park fans is whether Walt Disney World will “answer.” This is totally understandable, especially when you consider the fact that Dallas or Houston are more or less right between Orlando and Anaheim.
In fact, whenever the topic of a new theme park comes up, Texans inevitably point out that they’re state would be the perfect location. (Just look at the comments to Disney Parks in New Countries “Inevitable” or Will Walt Disney World Build a Fifth Gate?). While we agree with the sentiment that Texas would be a great location, we disagree with the conclusion that Disney will–or should–build more theme parks at new sites in the United States.
For one thing, Disney has dabbled with regional entertainment concepts in the past and it has not gone well. Granted, it’s been a while and they’ve never tried anything like what Universal is planning to build in Texas. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to see the Walt Disney Company going down this path for a couple of reasons. One is their past failures on this front and abandoned concepts along the way.
Another is that they largely seeming to be aiming upstream, establishing Disney as a premium product. I do not think that positioning is consistent with this approach, at least, not at present. Yet another reason is that the timing simply is not right.
Disney still has a ton of debt due to the 20th Century Fox acquisition, and continues to hemorrhage billions of dollars each quarter on streaming as it attempts to grow Disney+ and other services. Comcast is in a great position to expand its theme park footprint right now, but the same is not true for Disney. If anything, they need to shed some assets and better manage what they have.
Even setting all of that aside, I’m not sure whether building regional parks would be a savvy business move for Disney or not. Until sitting down to write this article, it was never something I even considered.
The upside would be that it would be another addition to Disney’s flywheel, and a way to capture audiences that are not currently served by Walt Disney World or Disneyland. That’s good for brand awareness and affinity, and would reinforce synergies with Disney+ and the company’s many merchandising initiatives.
The potential downside is that it could cannibalize business at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Right now, families with small children in Texas and neighboring states likely take expensive week-long rite-of-passage trips to Florida, spending thousands of dollars in the process.
If many of those could “check the box” (so to speak) by visiting a significantly cheaper kiddie park for a weekend, they probably would opt for that instead. (One of the things it’s important to do when analyzing decisions like this is putting yourself in the shoes of the average American–not a diehard Disney fan.)
Ultimately, it’ll be interesting to see how this works out for Universal Parks & Resorts. The calculus for Comcast is almost certainly different than it would be for Disney, in large part because Universal Orlando typically courts a different demographic. Its guests skew older, and are usually not rite-of-passage families as is the case with Disney.
That’s not the only way the two park operators differ; the companies also have access to very different libraries of intellectual property (my guess is this will end up being all things DreamWorks). If Disney opened regional parks, it might cannibalize business from Walt Disney World and Disneyland–but that’s highly unlikely to happen for Universal. (If anything, this Texas park is more likely to hurt Disney’s existing parks than Universal’s, but even that seems fairly far-fetched.)
I truly hope this is a huge success for Universal Parks & Resorts. In fact, I hope everything Universal is currently doing–along with every other amusement and theme park operator–is a huge success. Cheering for the failure of Disney’s competitors is not the best way to “prove” to the company that you’re a loyal, diehard fan.
Rather, it’s a real doofus move that demonstrates you enjoy paying more, enduring larger crowds, and settling for less. The ultimate beneficiary of competition is consumers; we all win when theme parks raise the stakes and try to outdo one another to court customers. Here’s hoping this initiative is a huge success for Universal, and these regional parks pop up all over the United States!
Need trip planning tips and comprehensive advice for your visit to Central Florida? Make sure to read our Universal Orlando Planning Guide for everything about Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida. Also check out our Walt Disney World Vacation Planning Guide for everything about those parks, resorts, restaurants, and so much more. For regular updates, news & rumors, a heads up when discounts are released, and much more, sign up for our FREE email newsletter!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of Universal’s plan to build a regional park aimed at families with small children in Texas? Think this will be a success–similar to LEGOLAND? Would you like to see Disney build similar parks in Texas or other areas outside the California and Florida markets? Do you agree or disagree with our commentary? Will you be attempting to visit Universal Orlando or Hollywood anytime soon? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
My family loves Universal but does not find it “Magic” like Disney. From the time they were little until they grew up, the only rides at Universal they cared for were ET, Jaws, and Spider-Man. They still love anything Disney . I would love to see a smaller, or much larger park in St. Louis or even here in Ohio. Once they built parks in cold places with snow like Tokyo and Paris, they had proved it still works without great heat. The best result might be taming the crowds down at the other parks. Not Texas though.
Tom, you ever been to Frisco? There’s tons of empty flat land with nothing but scrub brush on it. Most of the place is one strip mall after another, and many cookie-cutter subdivisions. It is far from anyone’s idea of a garden spot.
The residents of Frisco won’t derail this project–it is NOT near a Civil War battlefield. And what did the numb nuts in Virginia get instead of Disney’s America? A crappy shopping mall, exactly what they deserved.
Hopefully this works out for the actual families who live there and they get their park.
I was living near Haymarket when they announced Disney’s America…imagine being an 11-year-old kid and being told they are building a Disney theme park right near your home. Of course you know what ended up happening. It still hurts. And all of the stink about it ruining the rural area or creating traffic – now there are tons of McMansions, strip malls, and horrible traffic jams. Hope those folks are happy.
I think it’s great to see Universal come to Frisco. However, They need to look at the cost of living in the lower income brackets. As a business owner in the area, I find that we have to pay 10% more for lower income labor than other areas. Part of the problem is that there is no affordable housing for people working in service related jobs.
Disney just made such a fatal mistake focusing on streaming for me. I don’t wanna go to a movie theater with my kids. I don’t want to stream things I stare at a screen for my job. I want real life experiences. I wanna feel like I’m in a movie in real life. I think a lot of people feel the same way moving to streaming was a fatal mistake and Didney needs to have more regional themed entertainment experiences to compete w this. Universal gets me. I have 4 Universal trips planned this year.
“The potential downside is that it could cannibalize business at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Right now, families with small children in Texas and neighboring states likely take expensive week-long rite-of-passage trips to Florida, spending thousands of dollars in the process.”
Austin, TX resident here, and Tom, I think you could be right. My husband and 23-year-old youngest son (who is famous in our family for saying, “There is no heartache at Disney” lol) just returned from our first trip to WDW since 2019 (12/25-1/3). We echo the sentiments of so many who have commented on your blog that, with required park reservations, paid Genie+ and ILLs, and higher prices everywhere you look but diminished customer experience, much of the magic has gone. When someone commented on one of your posts recently (I’m paraphrasing here) that they might have to close the chapter on their vacations to WDW and just be content with their many fond memories, I nodded in agreement. Our next trip to Orlando will be back to Universal, which in 2021, was a far more enjoyable experience for the three of us. If our family was still young (we have 4 kids), we’d be heading up IH35 to Frisco and NOT flying to Orlando or Annaheim.
I think it’s a brilliant move by Universal. Traditionally, they are known as an adult type park system.
With this other child centered park in Texas, it would be a good grooming for kids to grow to love Universal at an early age, and to then go on to the adult Universal parks (mostly adult. I know they have Seusseland). Disney has cornered this market in the past and built a love of disney at an early age.
Maybe that is what Universal is doing. Who knows? Maybe they will even have something like that in Orlando in the future.
Tom,
I worked on Disney regional parks/resorts planning for a long time. Aulanai is the only result, but there were several other plans and sites planned.
Please send me an email address and I can share some content with you.
Love your site and commentary.
JH
When Disney explored a site for a park in Virginia I was excited. Finally it would bring Disney closer without having to go to Florida. I feel even more strongly now about avoiding Florida. We were there for February break. I would never go to Texas no matter what anyone builds there. I am still sad that Virginia never became a reality. It’s one of those shortsighted NIMBY things. Near me one woman started a petition campaign to stop a food court in a mall. She succeeded but it made the mall less successful and less a destination you’d travel for. It’s very difficult to win over the immediate neighbors who never see the relevance of plans past their own property line.
Well, we aren’t missing you here in TX, so that’s fine. But Disney has done a lot of study on additional locations and nothing has panned out as far as parks…
Wow Nico. Be nice
Seems like a smart move for Universal to get into regional parks through two different models, since they just announced the Las Vegas location as well. They can get a feel for what works and what doesn’t at two different locations. I’m assuming that Frisco was chosen due to its access to a large number of flights nearby. Like LA, if popularity blows up for some reason there is nothing stopping more people from flying in; unlike LA, they’ll probably want to have a Universal Studios shuttle to and from the airport like they do in Florida.
In addition, of the top 24 attended amusement/theme parks in the US none are in Texas so there’s less competition than there would be elsewhere, though I doubt there was much thought putting it in Ohio or Pennsylvania.
We lived in Oklahoma for a couple of years recently & wound up with an annual pass to Six Flags in Arlington to have a place to go for theme park visits. It is not Disney or Universal, but was better than no regional park. I think Universal is going to win big with this regional Texas park aimed at families with young kids. The little mall Legoland in Dallas seems to do very well. It is funny, but as soon as I saw the concept art I thought, hey that’s Legoland Orlando with different theming. My family loves Legoland. My daughter would rather go there than Disney most of the time.
As long as Universal does a quality job, this seems like a win. I wonder if there is any land for sale around the proposed park area. Seems like buying something there might not be a bad investment right now!
I live 15 minutes from this location, and I love the idea. For those unfamiliar with Frisco, it is home to the practice facilities of the Dallas Cowboys and Dallas Stars, minor league baseball and basketball teams, and an MLS team, as well as the only Kidzania in the US. They are building a new PGA course and resort near the Universal property. It’s already a destination for many, and likely one of the few cities in this area that will manage the partnership right. My son will likely be too old for this by the time it opens, but I think it’s a great idea. I hope it pushes Six Flags to fix up SFOT, as that park is falling apart.
Sounds like a lot of fun! As a mom of a 2 year old in Louisiana, I would definitely visit this. Sadly he will likely be in middle school before it’s built lol.
If done well, this would expand Universal’s brand while barely cannibalizing the consumer-base of their major parks (even potentially cutting into Disney’s market). Seems like a very savvy decision.
I can’t imagine that this would cannibalize any business from Universal Orlando or Hollywood. Totally different products. To the extent it hurts anyone, it’s probably WDW and DLR, but even that is a mild stretch. Seems like capturing a mostly new audience more than anything else.
In my opinion, the party that should be worried the most about this, especially in the short term, is Six Flags. We have one of the flagship Six Flags parks about an hour away from this in Arlington that has been going downhill for the better part of a decade. Something like this has a very good chance of sucking away a significant part of the Six Flags customer base in the local market. Also, by putting it in Frisco (vs. Austin/San Antonio/Houston), they can capitalize on a number of other significant population pockets in northern Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas that are just a couple of hours drive away.
Funny, we noted at Fiesta Texas here in San Antonio that the food and such was more expensive than at WDW and was terrible quality too. At least at WDW I can get a good beer for $10, but here it was like $12 for Bud Light. No thanks.
I had a similar thought about Six Flags and hope that the immediate effect would be for Six Flags to up its game. It is no longer a very family-friendly park and this may be the competition it needs to improve. As for a Disney gate in Texas, we’d love it, but I think there’s a strong contingent of Texans who have not been pleased with many of Disney’s choices in the last few years. Until it rehabilitates its image, Disney opening a park in Texas would be too great a risk. Any gate outside of the two original parks would have to be a sure thing and that is not Texas right now.
RE cannibalising business, it could also have the opposite effect: getting families to experience a taste of Disney (or Universal), and pushing them over the edge to book a trip to the “real thing”. The marketing would surely be positioned that way, too.
I love the idea! Thankful I don’t live in Frisco, because the traffic seems like a headache, but my family lives in GP, 40 minutes away. My husband and I took our 2 yr old to WDW and Universal over the Christmas break because he was “free”.
I feel like our family definitely fits the demographic Universal is trying to fill! I can definitely see my family booking a hotel for a weekend getaway, rather than having to fly to Orlando.
I think it would have made more sense in the San Antonio/Austin area where you already have small destination parks. Sea World/Schlitterban/Fiesta Texas. But North Texas? Yuck. Even Houston would have been preferable. As someone from South Texas I’d rather fly to Orlando then deal with Dallas metro.
Meh, San Antonio‘s humidity would make me hesitant to go. Plus having to drive through Austin to get to San Antonio is always a hassle No matter when we go to SA to visit family, I’m always looking forward to go back to Dallas’ dry heat. We did Sea World in May and could only go for a couple of hours before we went back to our hotel because of the heat.
Dallas, seriously? Yuck. That might be better than Houston. Maybe. But San Antonio is so, so much better than either of those! Our airport is tiny for being the 8th largest city in these USA, but it works. Either way, it’s a win for TX.
I guess we will still go up there and check it out, as we had a good time at the Orlando parks in October of 21 after a long, long break from them.
I agree, and I live in the metroplex. DFW’s concrete heat island will make this miserable in the summers, but it will also have to endure some rather nasty cold stretches in the winter as well (to be fair, it is Jan. 11 and it is 84 degrees). San Antonio’s weather is infinitely more suited for this endeavor. I have to say though that I’m surprised that they are taking a chance on Texas’s electrical grid, which is seeming held together with prayers and duct tape.
Haha, tell me about it. Can’t wait to get PV system on the house and running! We’re already working on building our battery systems and setting up a separate power panel for emergency stuff after the Winterpocalypse.
I’m jealous! My electric co-op doesn’t do buybacks and we can’t figure how to make the numbers work for solar right now. But I am so worried the grid is absolutely going to crash that we might just have to bite the bullet.
Well, I don’t think CPS Energy (San Antonio city owned) is the best on any of that either, but we are more concerned about reliability and saving money. We already ditched the old 1993 Trane HVAC for four (yes, 4) dual-zone mini-split systems which are way, way more efficient and we have ceiling cassettes and programmable thermostats in each room. That was about $11k in equipment and we installed them ourselves.
For PV, I will make the numbers work by designing and installing the system myself. I’m not going to pay someone else an additional $30k to install $10k worth of equipment. Prolly have to get a licensed sparky to look at it and tell the city it’s good for the final connection but that’s all I will do. Luckily we are still outside city limits for now. Key thing is to get a system installed and grid connected, then quietly expand it as time goes on.
I’m sure Universal will have some gigantic backup generators for the park and other buildings to ensure safety and continuity. Likely with significant solar augmentation for the hippie factor and of course cost savings. Our Seaworld annual passes are only $8/mo for TX residents, so Universal will hopefully be pretty decent too.
Thanks for the info! I *think* we are going to go down that road soon-ish. The IRA makes it more attractive. It’s just overwhelming, and I’m scared we are going to invest in the wrong tech and end up regretting it.
Enphase is the best out there. Get a system with their microinverters for best reliability. The newest versions allow scaling up almost infinitely by just connecting more to the system. They put out standard line voltage, so you avoid a high voltage DC bus and if one inverter or panel fails the others ignore it and keep on working. Newer grid-tie systems without batteries can be set up to work when grid power is down, unlike older ones where you’d have to trick the inverter into working in that case.
Does anyone know if the production capacity of the solar fields Disney has on their property was published anywhere? I know they do have a lot of onsite power generation to start with, but as a company they certainly embrace environmental concerns.
Agree with Enphase. I looked at a lot of systems and ended up with IQ8’s so I could have Sunlight backup (I wanted a bigger array vs. batteries), but the installer stopped installing backup earlier this year. I wanted to get it on the roof in time for the 2022 incentives (this was just prior to the extension passing), so I figured downline I’d see about getting it added in the future.
STC:42 x 370W = 15.54kW DC
PTC: 42 x 344.4W = 14.46kW DC
42 Silfab Solar SIL-370 HC
42 Enphase IQ8Plus-72-2-US
Nice! To me it’s the only way to go. We are looking at building our own battery banks with lithium cells, but that’s a whole different animal. Storage is…difficult.
Never would have seen this coming.
It really seems like Universal has the foot fully on the gas re: new investment and expansion of its parks.
If it’s done well, it seems like a great idea and o don’t think it would necessarily cannibalize their business. If anything you could use the smaller, regional park to see how the kids do before going all in on a very expensive week long trip…there is an element of conditioning (more mental than physical) your kids to be enjoyable at these parks.
Well now. Frisco, TX, east of the Tollway and north of Panther Creek? Another way of saying that is “Across the street from my neighborhood.” (Almost: it’s actually about a quarter mile north.)
If this was Disney announcing a new castle park on that spot, I’d likely be over the Moon. Universal building an aimed-at-small-kids park, well… my head is filled only with images of traffic jams when I try to go out to the grocery store.
This is about 5 miles away from me. My thoughts are that Frisco proper has the infrastructure in place to support it, but west of the park, we’re still 10 years from the upgrades necessary to support the traffic (especially highway 380, which will be what carries folks east & west). Perhaps this will push the state to accelerate the road construction timeline.