Construction work on the Phase One portion of the High Trestle Trail-Raccoon River Valley Trail connector could begin as soon as May if plans proceed as projected in the update presented to the Dallas County Conservation Board Tuesday night by Rich Voelker of Snyder and Associates, the board’s engineering consultant.
With the funding secured, the board agreed this week to let bids for the Phase One work at its April 10 meeting and then award the contract at its May 8 meeting. Phase One will see a section of the trail built from Perry’s eastern boundary at 18th Street to 130th Street.
Voelker said current concrete prices are “super competitive,” so a good bid price is to be hoped for the job. He said the first phase should be completed this summer.
The timeline for Phase Two is less clear, he said, but the route “would come from S Avenue at Woodward and work its way west to possibly Quinlan Avenue, but it’s kind of dependent on funding success.”
Land for the Phase Two section of the trail has been secured along the length of the old Milwaukee Road right of way between Woodward and Bouton.
“I think we have pretty much a solve for right of way from Woodward to Bouton for the most part,” Voelker said. “So kind of like normal, we’re kind of building the bookends first.”
Dallas County Conservation Board Director Mike Wallace said the connector trail will be “using railroad right of way property or just adjacent to railroad property. We won’t have to jog down into the road system between Bouton and Woodward at all.”
Voelker said the city of Woodward is acquiring easements in town using funds from a Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP) grant.
“They may have a little bit of REAP money left over for construction,” he said, “but they don’t have construction money for Woodward proper yet.”
Wallace said his department will submit a State Recreational Trail grant application in July and a Federal Recreational Trail grant application in October and will vie “between then and now for several other grants. We’ve got several pending right now. The Prairie Meadows Legacy grant is one of them. We’ll be meeting with their board in April and see how much we can get from them.”
Conservation Board Vice Chair Jim Miller chaired the March meeting, with members Nancy DeLong and Mark Powell attending. Board Chair Glenn Vondra and Secretary-Treasurer Lorinda Inman were present via conference call. Administrative Assistant Sherry James also attended.
About half the $5 million needed to build the nine-mile connector-trail linking the RRVT to the HTT has been raised. For more information or to make a donation toward the Let’s Connect project, visit the Let’s Connect website.
Voelker also briefed the conservation board on preliminary study of a planned overlay project for portions of the RRVT between Waukee and the Guthrie County line, including a detailed visual inspection and grading of the trail’s sections. The southern loop of the RRVT was built in the late 1980s and opened in 1990. It was last overlaid in 2004-2005.
