Newtown Pike project to include Lexington version of Golden Gate Bridge
By Delano R. Massey
A gateway “signature” bridge over Town Branch will be included in the Newtown Pike extension project, Mayor Jim Newberry announced Monday.

Newberry said the bridge would be an “opportunity to enhance the beauty of our city” and “welcome our visitors with a strong statement about community pride and history.” The bridge, he said, would be the gateway into the city.

The bridge will be designed by Entran, an engineering firm that has been hired to do design work for the road project. Newberry said conceptual bridge designs would be presented later.

When pressed about the design of the bridge, Newberry said he learned a long time ago “to not play to your weaknesses.”

“The last guy you want designing that bridge is me,” Newberry said to a room full of laughter. Newberry said that’s why the city has tapped Entran to design the bridge. Generally speaking, Newberry said, the bridge should reflect something that comes to mind when people think about Lexington.

He likened it to the Golden Gate Bridge, which stretches across the San Francisco Bay in San Francisco, or the Zakim Bridge, which spans the Charles River in Boston. Of course, he said, those examples are “on a much, much, much larger scale than what I’m talking about here.”

“But on the smaller scale, there’s no reason why we can’t have something that will be a landmark for Lexington — particularly when you think about Newtown Pike being such a gateway to Lexington,” Newberry said. “There will be many, many, many people whose first impressions of Lexington will be a result of coming across that bridge. And we need to make sure that that first impression is a positive one.”

Newberry, flanked by U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, Vice Mayor Jim Gray and councilman Tom Blues, also gave an update on the plans for the Newtown Pike extension, which “will take some of the traffic off busy downtown streets and provide more direct access to the interstates for south Lexington and the University of Kentucky campus.”

The extension project has been studied since the 1960s — as Chandler joked, “longer than I’ve been on earth.”

In February or March, families that live in the lower Davistown neighborhood will start moving into new temporary modular homes that will be erected in the park. The families will live in the temporary homes for up to two years while their old homes are torn down.

New, permanent housing will be built for them in the neighborhood.

The reconstruction of lower Davistown — one of the city’s most economically depressed areas — is part of the massive $87 million Newtown Pike extension project. Nearly half the project money, about $42 million, will be used to buy land in lower Davistown, rebuilding the area’s infrastructure and paying for a portion of new housing that will be built there.

Ultimately, the Newtown Pike extension will stretch from West Main Street, where Newtown Pike now ends, to Broadway and, with a second prong, to South Limestone at the main entrance to the University of Kentucky, along what is now Scott Street.

Engineers are working to complete the first phase of the boulevard, from Main Street to Versailles Road, by 2010, in time for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. Assuming funding is available, the second phase is to begin by 2011 and will stretch from Versailles Road to Broadway. The third phase is to begin by 2012 and will stretch from Patterson Street to Limestone. The city hopes the entire project will be finished by 2014.

In addition to the bridge and road construction, the project entails construction of a revitalized neighborhood in the area, which is rare for a federal or state road project.

A Community Land Trust will be established to ensure that current and future generations will have access to safe, affordable housing.

The Rev. Martina Ockerman of Nathaniel Mission said a committee made up of residents and members of the mayor’s office, among others, has been meeting once a month for the last four years to get everyone on board. Early on, she said, there was a lot of “mistrust” and “confusion,” but the group eventually came to a consensus.

Because it’s such a huge undertaking, and one that involves so many layers, Ockerman said this project could become a national model for combining affordable housing with a large project.

“People are watching this,” she said.

Reach Delano Massey at (859) 231-1455 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 1455.

Lexington Herald-Leader Publication

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Congressman says downtown Lexington need water feature

The Associated Press

August 14, 2007. LEXINGTON, Ky. —
U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler says downtown Lexington needs a water feature. He said yesterday that in the past, the city covered up The Town Branch of Elkhorn Creek that now flows beneath Vine Street.

Chandler says people flock to water, whether a river, a stream, a lake or an ocean. He notes that a water feature along Vine could be financed with some of the $500,000 in federal money he helped earmark for downtown revitalization in Lexington.

The appropriation is included in the federal Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill. It has already been passed by the House and Chandler says he expects the Senate to approve it as well.

It’s unclear how the $500,000 appropriation would be spent in downtown Lexington if it’s approved. Mayor Jim Newberry said the most pressing needs would be identified once the money becomes available.

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Happy trails: Proponents say hiking, biking opportunities
will be a big draw for city
Jennifer Hewlett, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.Apr. 20–For years, Lexington leaders have envisioned a system of interconnecting trails that would run throughout Fayette County, providing places for people to bike and hike — and possibly serving as a draw for tourists and others hoping to get an up-close look at the Bluegrass.

Those plans have generally been a path to nowhere.

But this might be the year when many Lexingtonians are able to start dusting off their bicycles and lacing up their sneakers.

Before the year is out, Lexington’s trail mileage should nearly double with the construction of 6.5 more miles of paved trail for bicycling, walking and other types of non-motorized use. The mileage, scattered throughout Fayette County in six planned trail sections, will bring the total number of trail miles in Fayette County to nearly 15.

And city leaders, who say Lexington lags behind other cities in
recreational opportunities such as trails, plan to spend more money on trail-building next year. So far, there are plans to build 4 miles of trail in Fayette County in 2008. An additional 13.6 miles are on the drawing board.

Mayor Jim Newberry has proposed spending $2 million for trails in the next city budget. City officials say that local money could be parlayed into $10 million in new trails if used to match federal grants.

Newberry said the renewed focus on trail-building could bring a lot of benefits to Lexington.

“In addition to recreation, they are economic-development tools, they
are paths to improved health and can even be alternative
transportation,” he said this week as the city put the finishing
touches on the first mile of the Brighton East Rail Trail. That route
runs from Bryant Road to Pleasant Ridge Drive in southeastern Fayette
County.

The mile-long section, which was paid for with $426,000 in federal funds and will be officially dedicated Sunday, is the first piece of trail built along an abandoned railroad corridor in Fayette County. The railroad abandonment runs from Lexington to just outside of Ashland.

“How can anybody not be for this?” said Lexington attorney Bill Gorton, who represents the Kentucky Rails to Trails Council, an organization that promotes turning abandoned railroad corridors into trails and greenways. “It is an absolute win-win for everybody, including neighbors.”

Trail sections to be built this year include:

— A second mile of the Brighton East Rail Trail, from Pleasant Ridge Drive to Deer Haven Lane, at a cost of $500,000.

— Town Branch Trail, 2 miles, from Long Branch Lane to Alexandria Drive, $550,000.

— South Elkhorn Trail, 1 mile, from Lockdale Terrace to Joseph Bryan Way, $200,000.

— Wellington Trail, a half-mile on Reynolds Road, from the traffic circle to the Shillito Park entrance, $150,000.

— Liberty Park Trail, a half-mile parallel to Flying Ebony Drive, $100,000.

— West Hickman Trail, a mile and a half, from Man o’ War Boulevard to Veterans Park, $1.5 million.

Construction is set to begin on the Liberty Park Trail section in the next couple of weeks. All of the trail projects planned for this year, which are being paid for with federal transportation dollars, should be complete before the end of the year, said Keith Lovan, a municipal engineer for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government who oversees local trail projects.

Trail proponents in Lexington point out that in other parts of the country, trails have led to an increase in tourism and the development of businesses along them, including bicycle shops and bed-and-breakfast inns.

“It actually increases the value of properties near or adjacent to
these trails,” Gorton said. “The people that use them are generally the kind of people you would want in your neighborhood.”

Van Meter Pettit, who has been working for years to get a trail built that essentially follows Town Branch of Elkhorn Creek, sees that particular proposed trail as more than something that would lead to health and economic benefits. He sees it as a way of restoring “dormant” history.

Lexington got its start along Town Branch, part of which now runs under Vine Street and emerges west of Rupp Arena.

“What happened was, the city was just a village — it was laid out on a creek, and then it outgrew the creek, and they kind of covered it up, bit by bit,” said Pettit, who is president of Town Branch Trail Inc. “A good century and a half of the city developed along the regular course of the creek.”

A half-mile section of Town Branch Trail, from Leestown Road to Long Branch Lane, opened in October 2005.

There is opposition to certain trail legs proposed for Lexington. Some people who live near proposed trail segments are concerned about loss of privacy and vandalism, Lovan said.

“It has proven not to be the situation,” he said. “A lot of times our biggest opponents become our biggest supporters.”

Kentucky is behind many states when it comes to trails. But several other cities and towns in the state, including Louisville, Bowling Green and Owensboro, have made a commitment to building them. Louisville, especially, has a good trail program, Lovan said.

“We have a plan for a 100-mile loop, known right now as the Metro Loop,” said Metro Louisville transportation planner Mohammad Nouri. Nineteen miles of the loop, which will encircle Jefferson County, are already in place. Construction is to begin on 8 more miles this summer, he said.

He said Lexington ought to be commended for the trails it’s building.

Lexington leaders hope to eventually have two major trail arteries —
one running north-south, from Veterans Park to the Kentucky Horse Park, and the other running east-west, from Masterson Station Park to Deer Haven Lane — to which neighborhood trailways would be connected. The exact routes for the north-south and east-west trails have not been determined, but three of the trail sections set to be built this year would be legs of the north-south and east-west trails, Lovan said.

“A lot of American cities have 20, 30, 60 miles of trails, and
Lexington is one of those great American cities that is catching up,” Pettit said. “Louisville sets a very high benchmark for us, and it’s a good thing. If we set our sights on emulating Louisville, then we’ll have a world-class trail system in no time.”If you go

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The first section of the Brighton East Rail Trail will be dedicated at 2 p.m. Sunday in Pleasant Ridge Park. The event will include bike and pony rides, popcorn and prizes.

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Lexington is getting 6.5 miles of biking and walking trails this year. The trail sections to be constructed are scattered throughout Fayette County.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

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Posted on Sun, Oct. 09, 2005with photos: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/12856505.htm

TRYING OUT A NEW TRAIL

More than 100 test first leg of route at McConnell’s Trace subdivision

By Ryan Alessi

HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

Road bikes, mountain bikes, strollers and scooters.

Wagons, wheelchairs, an old-time high-wheeler bicycle and even a homemade four-seater “quad” bike.

If it had wheels and wasn’t motorized, it probably was on the first leg of the new Town Branch Trail yesterday morning.

More than 100 Lexington residents attended the opening of the half-mile stretch of asphalt that winds behind the McConnell’s Trace subdivision. That new section hooks up to a trail that runs through Masterson Station Park, just across Leestown Road.

“We could not be more grateful and excited that this day has finally come,” said Van Meter Pettit, president of Town Branch Trail Inc.

By next year, Pettit said, he hopes the trail will extend a mile and a half farther, to Alexandria Drive — a key step to connecting the community through trails.

The long-term plan, he said, is to have trails linking the Kentucky Horse Park and the University of Kentucky’s Coldstream research campus, off Newtown Pike, to Masterson Station Park and the Town Branch Trail.

“What if we could connect our tourist destinations with trails so people can be bicycle tourists instead of riding in station wagons?” Pettit mused.

Bike enthusiasts are pushing for precisely that.

“We hope Lexington will get to the point of other residential cities, where you can commute on the trails and off of the roadways,” said Wendy Trimble, who with husband Mark owns Pedal the Planet bike shop.

The store’s employees as well as some from another bike shop, Pedal Power, offered bike safety checks at yesterday’s event.

“There’s fabulous riding in the Bluegrass area, especially around the horse farms,” Trimble said. “But the city itself needs more infrastructure.”

This first half-mile of the Town Branch Trail has been years in the making.

Initially, Pettit said, he had planned for the section of trail to open in 2003. But it was delayed until enough of the subdivision had been developed.

Dennis Anderson, owner of the construction company that’s building the homes, donated the land for the trail, which was appraised at roughly $800,000. City officials then used that contribution to leverage $450,000 in federal grant money to pay for the two miles of trail between Masterson Station and Alexandria Road.

Not only was no local tax money spent, but now the trail will increase land value, which will boost the city’s property tax revenue, Pettit told the crowd yesterday.

Anderson said he hopes the trail will increase awareness of the Town Branch stream, which is historically significant to Lexington.

The McConnell brothers, who explored the Central Kentucky area centuries ago, used the waterway as a navigational tool to discover what is now downtown Lexington, he explained.

Organizers placed temporary signs along the trail yesterday explaining the environmental function of the stream, which has been polluted over the decades.

After the brief celebratory remarks, bikers, walkers and stroller-pushers streamed through on the official inaugural trip.

“There’s a lot of different ways you can use this trail,” Mayor Teresa Isaac said.

Two of the organizers — Pettit and Zina Merkin — as well as Democratic state Sen. Ernesto Scorsone joined Chevy Chase resident Alex Meade on his homemade “quad” bike, which Meade assembled mostly from aircraft tubing.

But the four weren’t quite in sync, which made the bike wobble and tip, dumping Scorsone on the asphalt.

Scorsone was the trail’s first casualty, but he wasn’t hurt.

The quartet drew applause after Scorsone followed the old cliche: If you fall off your bike, get back on and try it again.

“I’m going to give bike lessons after that,” he joked.

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