Earth-movers have arrived at Brown County Schools’ Eagle Park to prepare to build another segment of the Salt Creek Trail.
Since 2013, planned expansions of the trail to connect downtown Nashville with Brown County State Park have been on hold while the Indiana Department of Transportation worked to secure easements from property owners in the path.
The necessary agreements have now been made with owners in the section that will run from the state park to Parkview Road, in the area of the former RedBarn Jamboree and Hesitation Point bicycle shop.
In February, the school board approved the sale of real estate interests to INDOT so that a bridge can be placed for the trail. It will go on the northwest corner of the school district’s Eagle Park property spanning over to the Parkview area, Superintendent Laura Hammack said.
The parties settled on a price of $161,000. The original offer INDOT made to the school board was $13,700.
A second bridge over Salt Creek will be installed on land owned by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in the state park, Hammack said.
In 2014, it was announced that a two-section, 400-foot-long, vehicular bridge owned by the state was coming to Brown County for use on the trail. INDOT offered to pay to rehab the bridge sections for their new use and place them on the trail.
Last week, Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner, the trail project manager, said he didn’t know when the bridges will be delivered because they are still in use in Clay County; they’re currently part of State Road 46 while INDOT builds a new road. Those crews are running behind because of conflicts with weather and utilities, he said.
On March 28, the school board also approved an access easement agreement between the school corporation and the county, which allows for the actual trail to be in Eagle Park.
This also allowed the county to begin removing trees in the area of the trail and where the bridges will be dropped. That work had to be completed by April 1 before the beginning of the bat habitat season.
Hammack said the school board was intentional about knowing which trees would be removed. “We were really intentional about making sure the plans were fundamentally mapped so that we understood where trees would be removed. It was extraordinarily important to the board to make sure those plans were detailed and defined,” she said.
Erosion control was also used, Magner said at the March 20 Brown County Commissioners meeting.
A date on when trail surface construction will begin at Eagle Park has not been finalized, as final revisions to plans are being made, Magner said last week.
The school district is still supposed to be notified when the property is being worked on, but they are not a part of the trail development conversation, as Magner is the lead on all of the trail work, Hammack said.
For example, if the cross-country trail at Eagle Park is damaged during construction of the Salt Creek Trail, the school district will participate in “collaborative conversations” with the county on how best to mitigate the damage. The county would then pay for that mitigation, Hammack said.
What’s next?
The 3-mile-long Salt Creek Trail project started with route planning in October 2002. The first three-quarter-mile paved section, between the Brown County YMCA and Nashville CVS, opened in the fall of 2013.
A Salt Creek Trail Committee of local people was formed before the project became a county project with the involvement of INDOT and the DNR, which offered the Clay County bridges. The county then had to sign off as the recipient.
“Then, honestly, it becomes no different than a paving state highway kind of thing. INDOT does it,” commissioner Diana Biddle said. “While having a trail committee is good for fundraising and that sort of stuff, basically, all of the decisions that are required now are required as votes by the commissioners,” she said. This means that a trail committee is not needed right now to oversee the phases yet to be finished, since funding has been secured through grants and donations, she said.
Easements have not been secured for the middle phase of the trail, which would connect Parkview Road with the YMCA. Last week, Magner said that survey work was in process for a preliminary design of that route. Biddle said that only possible routes have been identified for that phase, but nothing official.
One option would require working with landowners to secure land along Salt Creek for the trail. That would require building another pedestrian bridge over the creek, Biddle said. A bridge could be funded with future trail grants from the state, she said.
Another option could be using a sidewalk alongside Maple Leaf Boulevard that would then go out to State Road 46 East, use existing highway easements to the Sgt. Jeremy R McQueary Memorial Bridge, then take the trail down to creek level at that point.
From there, the trail would connect back up to the donated highway bridge that will be placed near Parkview Road to go into Eagle Park.
“I think we get need to get the bridges done. We need to finish the (Brown County) Music Center. Then, by the time we get all that done, towards the end of the year, we will be ready to look at, ‘This is the last piece, and how we are going to connect?’” Biddle said about the middle phase.
Biddle said a committee of community members would be needed to look into the fourth phase of the Salt Creek Trail once the other phases are completed.
“Would we go to the school (campus in Nashville)? Would we try to go out to Deer Run? Where does the community want it to go? At that point, we would probably turn it back to a community committee to investigate different alternatives,” she said.
A committee could also be formed to raise money for that phase of the trail, she said.
