One thing leads to another.
This road — a trail in our case — began in late April when three students from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology presented a plan for a possible extension of the Rivergreenway northwest to the Old Bluffton Cemetery.
When the groundbreaking ceremony was held June 2 for the new Lancaster Park, we were reminded that project includes the extension of the Interurban Trail north from County Road 200 N (Monroe Street) to the park.
It was a week or so later we received and printed a letter from Bluffton resident Tom Plummer. His message: Hey, what about the trail that had been discussed last September that would connect the large mobile-home development on east Ind. 124 to downtown?
“You see many walking along here, being anywhere from kids of all ages to bicycles, strollers with babies in them and for a period of time, there was a gentleman in his power wheelchair trying to navigate his way to downtown,” he wrote.
“We have had some discussion on that,” Mayor John Whicker told me when I inquired — this would be mid-July or so. We had a brief discussion on the route’s challenges. “There are utilities on one side of the road and geography issues on the other,” he mentioned.
My intent at that time was to do some sort of follow-up, but retirement got in the way. It’s grand-kid season. This is the all-too-brief period between summer leagues and camps ending and school beginning that we can get them shuffled through for some one-on-one time. All good. Great to see them come; good to see them go. There’s a reason we have kids when we’re young. We’ve had a brief break the latter part of this week before a final round.
Meanwhile, the world continues. At this past Tuesday’s meeting of the City Board of Works, Mike Lautzenheiser, Jr., requested permission to seek an engineering study and route evaluation to connect that neighborhood to the Interurban Trail and thus, downtown. This will include a cost estimate.
“There are indeed challenges on both sides of the road,” he confirmed. His first choice would be to construct a 10-foot-wide trail, but acknowledges that there may only be room for a five-foot-wide sidewalk. “Both would serve the same purpose,” he said, which would be for the safety of residents who often have no choice but to walk that route.
Hence, the trail of the trails is progressing it seems. The proposed extension along the river towards the old cemetery has its issues as well, Mike said, but the mayor remarked that the students’ study’s cost estimate of $400,000-$500,000 is “doable.”
“There’s no funding or time-line set for that yet,” Mike says, “and their routing is not necessarily final.”
It would take the trail right past the Chamber of Commerce building which also serves as the county’s tourism and visitor’s center. Which would be neat.
Mike added that there are some “very early discussions” of extending the Archbold-Wilson Trail in Ossian to that town’s northside, which would be another small step towards the long-term goal of the Poka-Bache Trail that may someday connect the Pokagon and Ouabache state parks.
In late June I was researching the 2003 Flood stories and noted that a proposed project to turn East Dustman Road from Main Street to the city limits was being discussed and was more controversial than I had remembered. Part of the plans were to add a sidewalk. One critic noted that it would be a “sidewalk to nowhere.” Driving that road daily, I can report that sidewalk gets a healthy amount of use, both recreational and functional.
Which reminded me: I wasn’t around when the Rivergreenway was developed and constructed, but more than one person has since confessed that they had originally thought that was a huge waste of time and money. “How wrong could I be,” I remember one saying. It is a rare day that you drive down River Road and don’t see the trail being used and it is one of the first features mentioned when we discuss our community’s assets.
If you build it, they will walk.
Personally, I’d really like to also see an extension from the Interurban Trail west from Main Street to the YMCA. It could run along East Dustman Road and give youngsters a safe way to bike or walk to the facility — another one of our quality quality-of-life assets.
That’s another trail that might lead to another.
miller@news-banner.com
