The “Let’s Connect” fundraising campaign for the Perry-to-Woodward bike trail connection will tap another source of donations Thursday and Friday when the committee holds a garage sale at 1118 Second St. in downtown Perry, the former home of Walt’s Sporting Goods.
“We’ll have furniture, household items, baby clothes, adult extra large clothes in both men’s and women’s and lots more,” said Sandy Grubbs of rural Woodward, who is hosting the garage sale fundraiser in the building she recently bought. “All the proceeds will go the the ‘Let’s Connect’ campaign, so we encourage everybody to come and support the connector trail.”
The short-term goal of “Let’s Connect” is to raise $250,000 by Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 5, and the garage sale aims to help tip the scales toward the total.
The “Let’s Connect” campaign also seeks individual donors. A “Let’s Connect” donor packet contains background on the project, including details of the money raised so far from state and federal recreational trails grants, other public funding sources and private donations. A donation form is also included in the packet.
That $250,000 represents only 5 percent of the estimated $5 million needed to build the nine-mile connector trail, but the dollars will be matched three-to-one by State Recreational Trail Grant funds, and the total will go toward construction of the first section of trail: along the abandoned Chicago and Northwestern Railroad line between 18th Street in Perry and 130th Street in county territory.
The “Let’s Connect” campaign brings together a number of stakeholders in the connector-trail project, led by the Dallas County Conservation Board and the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association and including representatives of the cities of Perry and Woodward, local business and industry figures and a number of private parties who see the connector’s potential to spur economic development.
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