Grading is complete on the rerouted portion of the Raccoon River Valley Trail north of the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Perry, and paving is expected to begin this week.
“From what I understand,” Sven Peterson, Perry city administrator, told the Perry City Council at its Monday meeting, “they said they should be paving this week, so that’s really coming along. They’re doing a good job out there.”
The northward relocation of the bike trail is part of a larger expansion of Tyson’s footprint at the Perry plant. Moving the bike trail northward means building on Perry’s brownfield property, and Tyson paid the city a one-time easement payment of $1 per square foot or $3,046.
In connection with the trail realignment, the city council also approved a two-year extension of its land lease option with Megawatt Photovoltaic Development Inc. The company has an easement on about 40 acres of the brownfield property and hopes to build an array of solar collectors that could generate as much as five megawatts of energy for use in the Perry area.
The original agreement with Megawatt was signed in 2014 and was set to expire at the end of 2018. The council extended the lease option agreement to Dec. 31, 2020, “subject to Megawatt providing a report showing their good-faith efforts to have an agreement in place for a solar array” within the two-year extension.
