McKinney Residents Push Back Against Plans to Demolish Historic Ice House

People in McKinney are pushing back against plans to demolish a piece of city history.

What was an ice house on the east side is set to be torn down to make way for a new municipal complex.

“We have something that no one else has,” said lifelong McKinney resident Nina Dowell Ringley.

Ringley and more than 150 other home and business owners in McKinney have placed signs in their front yards that read “Save Our Historic Ice House McKinney, Texas.”

“It's not just history that we're preserving, we're reserving the uniqueness of McKinney,” said McKinney resident Tom Michero.

The historic ice house is a three-story brick building at Virginia and Main.

Opened in 1920, it's where McKinney residents came together for decades to chill food, drinks and buy blocks of ice since ice makers didn’t exist.

“People that were in construction would get ice there daily and would put in their cans,” said 93-year-old Early B. Milstead, a McKinney native.

Most recently, the structure was used as an impound lot.

The city of McKinney bought the property and neighboring lots and planned to use the historic ice house in its new municipal complex.

“To those of us who are big-time McKinney-ites, we thought that was the coolest thing ever,” Ringley said.

Ringley said she thought that was happening and even began planning a display to go inside the structure. Then in late April, she says she learned plans changed.

“I first cried then got that out of my system and then got angry,” Ringley said.

Barry Shelton is an assistant city manager in McKinney.

“We agree that saving our history of McKinney is really important,” Shelton said.

Late last year, Shelton said various engineers and experts found extensive damage to the building and that it would cost around $3 million to keep it standing.

“At that point, the city council determined that the cost was not worth the benefit, the building had been neglected for decades, honestly,” Shelton said.

Historic silos, Shelton said, and a mural being painted on the side will be a focal point for people on a new plaza that’ll be created at the complex.

As for the ice house, Shelton said the city is moving forward with plans for the building to be demolished.

“We could have come up with many possibilities, like grants, funding all types of things but we did not have time. We just found out,” Ringley said.