Council seeks grants for U.S. 20 bike trail

By Becky Brooks

Man­ag­ing Editor

Belle­vue City Coun­cil found a great way to start 2013 by learn­ing that the Recre­ation Depart­ment has been approved for a $95,000 grant to acquire the Knights of Colum­bus prop­erty, dis­cov­er­ing a devel­oper intends to pur­chase and ren­o­vate a local apart­ment com­plex, and finally approv­ing a res­o­lu­tion to allow the city to seek three grants to extend the North Coast Inland Trail into down­town from the west.

For Monday’s first meet­ing of the year, coun­cil had a bushel of infor­ma­tion handed to them in a 45-minute work ses­sion and a 30-minute reg­u­lar meeting.

Rec. Direc­tor Marc Weisen­berger, Law Direc­tor David Walling­ford and Safety-Service Direc­tor Jef­frey Crosby asked the coun­cil at its 7 p.m. work ses­sion to add a res­o­lu­tion onto its agenda for the night to approve seek­ing grants for the bike trail exten­sion into down­town Belle­vue from Cty. Rd. 177.

This project would address half of the trail through the city and a future project would address a sec­ond sec­tion from down­town to Prairie Road, offi­cials reported.

They also requested the res­o­lu­tion be approved in one night as an emer­gency as the appli­ca­tion date is only weeks away.

The city will seek grants from the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources through the Recre­ational Trails Pro­gram and Clean Ohio Trail Fund. The res­o­lu­tion, which later passed unan­i­mously, 7–0, in the coun­cil meet­ing, will allow Weisen­berger to file for the grants.

Crosby explained that if the city receives those grants that money and the city’s in-kind ser­vices of plan­ning and design will be put up as match­ing funds to seek a larger Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion grant for the project.

The project on the west side would cost approx­i­mately $860,000, the Safety-Service Direc­tor said.

Crosby pointed out the city is also work­ing with the Rec. Depart­ment to plan the devel­op­ment of the new down­town park, which will be located where the for­mer junior high build­ing stood on North Street.

“This bike trail would help to marry this whole thing up,” he said about pro­vid­ing a trail from Cty. Rd. 177 and The Belle­vue Hos­pi­tal to the new park.

The safety-service direc­tor said the plan for the city sec­tion of the bike trail links Cty. Rd. 177 to down­town as far as the NKP and Mad River Rail­road Museum.

The trail would be incor­po­rated into a larger side­walk along the south side of U.S. 20.

“It’s all city right-of-way,” Crosby pointed out about the land which will be used. He said that pur­chas­ing addi­tional land would not be required. Crosby said some trees may need to be elim­i­nated in a few locations.

Weisen­berger said the new route will be much safer than the Cty. Rd. 292 trail on the road to Cty. Rd. 191 pub­lic roads which the city now has marked to fin­ish the trail into the city from Cty. Rd. 177.

City offi­cials will be work­ing today with Steve Gruner, direc­tor of the San­dusky County Park Dis­trict, in com­plet­ing the appli­ca­tions for the grants.

Dur­ing the work ses­sion, Weisen­berger also announced he has received noti­fi­ca­tion that the city has secured the $95,000 grant it was seek­ing to pur­chase the Knights of Colum­bus build­ing and prop­erty adjoin­ing the Com­mu­nity Cen­ter. He added he has not yet received the paper­work back on the project.

Also at the work ses­sion, Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Karen Jus­tice advised coun­cil mem­bers that WSOS is seek­ing a res­o­lu­tion of sup­port for efforts being made by a devel­oper the agency is work­ing with to acquire Sir Fred­er­ick Estates and reha­bil­i­tate it with a $5 mil­lion invest­ment. The facil­ity would con­tinue to be a low income facil­ity, Jus­tice said. Coun­cil mem­bers asked Walling­ford to draw up the res­o­lu­tion for the next meeting.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 15 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.