Fix on way for LR trail

City seeks bids to repair path closed by slide

A section of the Arkansas River Trail has a detour sign directing traffic around an area that collapsed into the river during a heavy rain in 2009. The city of Little Rock is taking bids on repairing the 200-foot-long section.
A section of the Arkansas River Trail has a detour sign directing traffic around an area that collapsed into the river during a heavy rain in 2009. The city of Little Rock is taking bids on repairing the 200-foot-long section.

— Closed off since a 2009 landslide, a section of the Medical Mile trail in downtown Little Rock will soon be repaired.

The city advertised the project last week, seeking bids for excavation, embankment construction and asphalt paving for the 200-footlong segment of the trail that collapsed into the Arkansas River during a heavy rain in October 2009.

Repairing the 7-year-old segment, which is part of the larger Arkansas River Trail, was delayed for several years as city officials worked out engineering and repair costs with the U.S. Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It’s a whole lot more complicated than just dumping dirt into a hole,” said Bryan Day, assistant city manager, who pointed out that the trail’s location on a bluff above the river is problematic.

It took nearly a year to work out an agreement with FEMA to help pay for trail repairs, with the agency agreeing to help cover the $339,354 needed to rebuild the riverbank and trail, which local health providers helped raise money for in 2004. The city is obligated to pay 12.5 percent of the final bill, or a little more than $42,000.

Bids on the project will be opened at 3 p.m., Jan. 17 at City Hall. Reconstruction should take about three months, said Mark Webre, deputy director of operations for Little Rock’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“I’m hopeful to see all this completed and ready for a spring or early summer use,” Webre said.

The Medical Mile trail, which starts in Riverfront Park and runs behind City Hall, is technically part of the 14-mile Arkansas River Trail even though it dead-ends at the Baring Cross railroad bridge without connecting to other sections of the trail.

The city learned earlier this month that it didn’t make the cut for a federal grant that would have helped the city close the gap from where the Medical Mile ends to the trail’s western leg that picks back up on Cantrell Road.

The missing link of the trail near Cantrell Road forces bicyclists and pedestrians to navigate a narrow sidewalk on the Cantrell Road bridge or the road itself. Some cyclists also use several city streets, going the wrong way at some points, to detour around the busy roadway.

The Arkansas River Trail stretches from the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge in downtown Little Rock west to the Big Dam Bridge, where it crosses into North Little Rock and loops back toward downtown.

Mayor Mark Stodola said he hopes to move forward soon, using $1.03 million from the state’s General Improvement Fund that Little Rock received in 2005. The city also put aside $500,000 in next year’s budget as a match for any possible grant for the River Trail.

“We’ll continue to work on that to try and get this done,” Stodola said.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/29/2011

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