Goodwin Lake's Front Door Moved to Iris Arbor, and Prince Street Paid for the New One

The Goodwin Lake Walking Trail has one way in now, and it is on Iris Arbor Drive. On Feb. 25, 2026, the city announced that the old lot at 3201 N. Prince St. would close for construction. The city also said that entrance would no longer be accessible going forward. A McAlister's Deli is being built on that land. City Manager Justin Howalt said it will share a building with Papa John's. The city sold the land first, and that sale covered close to nine of every ten dollars in the project that built the new entrance and reworked the trail around it.

Most people saw this as a restaurant taking a parking lot. The city's own paperwork shows the restaurant land paid for most of the trail's rebuild, new entrance included.

The Sale Came First

The city sold the Prince Street parcels more than a year before the city announced the closure. On January 16, 2025, a request went to the Clovis City Commission. Its background section starts with the sale itself.

"The City of Clovis has sold the properties along Prince St. that act as the existing parking lot and entrance to Goodwin Lake Trails. As a result of this the parking lot will need to be relocated."

That language comes from the commission approval sheet for the project, officially "ITB-24-0911-01 Goodwin Lake Improvements." The city took bids on December 13. K. Barnett and Sons, Inc. came in lowest at $1,197,222 before gross receipts tax, bid alternates included. The commission approved it on the consent agenda, according to the meeting minutes.

The funding breakdown is the part that matters:

• Total project cost with New Mexico gross receipts tax: about $1.29 million
• From selling the two Prince Street properties: about $1.14 million, held in Fund 61, Special Parks Improvements
• From undesignated Fund 61 cash reserves: about $153,000

So the land sale paid for roughly 88 percent of the project, and park reserves covered the rest. The money from the old entrance went into a fund set aside for park improvements, then back into the same trail. Before any of this, the trail's parking sat on a commercial stretch of Prince Street. Selling that frontage gave the trail a budget it hadn't had before.

What That Money Bought on Paper

The contract scope was bigger than a new parking lot. The approval sheet lists four pieces of work:

1. About one mile of trail improvements
2. A 7,500-square-foot playground
3. Parking lot improvements
4. Drainage work: a low-water crossing, a riprap channel and a riprap outfall

The loop is about one mile long, so "approximately 1 mile of trail improvements" reads as nearly the whole path. City officials describe the trail as 1.125 miles of flat, paved trail around a playa lake, with more than 40 acres of natural grassland. The Eastern New Mexico News rounded that to 1.1 miles.

The drainage items show what kind of place this is. A playa is a shallow basin that collects runoff. Low-water crossings and riprap are what you build when water crosses the path at some times of year and needs somewhere to go. Clovis has worked on playas before. A Migratory Bird Joint Ventures report from 2018 described a partnership between the city and the Playa Lakes Joint Venture on teaching about playa wildlife habitat and restoring playas in Curry County. That is background, not a current survey of what lives at Goodwin Lake. It does help explain why a trail project here put so much into drainage.

What's Confirmed and What Isn't

The public record shows what the city paid for. It says less about what is on the ground today. No completion report or list of finished work has come out since the ribbon cutting, so here is what each source does and doesn't show.

The Clovis-Curry County Chamber of Commerce held the ribbon cutting on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. at the Iris Arbor Drive parking area. The Chamber's ribbon-cutting gallery lists it as "Goodwin Lake Trails Improvements at Iris Arbor." The Chase Gentry Center for Workforce Education on East 7th Street had its ribbon cutting the same day.

On restrooms and parking, the only recent report is one AllTrails review from August 30, 2026. It says there were no bathrooms and parking was hard to find. That's one user's visit, not a city statement, and conditions could have changed since. If restrooms matter for a morning with small kids, call the city first.

The Restaurant That Started It Is Still Coming

The deli that moved the entrance hasn't opened yet. In late June, city Building Safety Department Director Pete Wilt listed McAlister's among projects under construction and placed it next to Popeyes on North Prince Street. As of October 4, 2026, the McAlister's page for 3207–3211 North Prince Street still says "Coming Soon" and gives no date.

That puts the timeline in an odd order. The city announced the end of the Prince Street entrance in February, the Iris Arbor entrance had its ribbon cutting in August, and in October the business on the land that paid for the swap still shows "Coming Soon."

Using the New Entrance This Fall

Here is what's useful to know before your next walk:

• There's one entrance. Park at the lot on Iris Arbor Drive. The city says the Prince Street entrance "will no longer be accessible going forward."
• The playground is at the trailhead. It sits by the new parking area, so a walk around the loop and playground time can happen in one stop.
• The path is flat and paved. It's about a mile and an eighth by the city's measurement, workable for strollers and easy for a lunch-hour lap.
• Dog rules aren't clear. No official posted dog policy turned up in the research, and AllTrails contradicts itself on leashes. Keeping dogs leashed and picking up after them is the safe choice until the city posts something.
• There's another option nearby. AllTrails lists the short loop, nature trail and long loop at Ned Houk Memorial Park as nearby trails, for days when you want something longer than the playa loop.

Questions about the trail go to the City of Clovis at 575-763-9653 or [email protected]. The October and November 2026 city calendars don't list any organized walks or programs at Goodwin Lake or Ned Houk. For now, fall at the lake is open-ended: park on Iris Arbor, walk the loop, and see how the playa looks after the season's rain.

When the city sells land on a busy corridor and the money comes back to a park, it shows up in daily life well before it shows up in a sales listing. Tracking changes like this around Clovis is part of the job for Tammy Waters and The Waters Group. If you live near Goodwin Lake and want to know how the new entrance and the Prince Street changes affect your part of north Clovis, request your free buyer/seller packet and give us a call.