Council OKs contract for trail system

Bentonville firm to expand, improve Kessler Park paths

FAYETTEVILLE — The effort to expand and improve the trail system at Kessler Mountain Regional Park will hit the ground running.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a $296,721 contract with Progressive Trail Design to add about 3.5 miles of trail to south Fayetteville’s ecological preserve next to the regional park. The plan also calls for fixing up about 8 miles of trail at Kessler.

Progressive Trail Design, with its headquarters in Bentonville, served as one of the architects of the Kessler Mountain trails plan released last year. The plan ultimately will bring 7.6 miles of trails, a trailhead, informative signs, more parking and other features throughout the area.

The council approved the contract with no discussion or comment. Park Planner Ken Eastin gave a short presentation to the council on the plan, including photos of example trails and maps showing where the trails will go.

City Attorney Kit Williams said the plan looked better than he could imagine. Mayor Lioneld Jordan said simply, “That’s good stuff.”

A Walton Family Foundation $210,000 matching

grant will help pay for the first phase of the project. Half of the project has to be finished by June with the rest complete by the end of the year in order to get the money, Eastin said. A trail grand opening is tentatively planned for September.

“That is very ambitious but we are going to go about that full-guns, so we’re going to shoot for that,” he said.

The trail construction makes up the biggest chunk of the cost at $124,272, or $6.92 per foot. The trail improvements come next at $101,656. Just more than $24,290 will go toward trail layout, flagging and using GPS to document the routes. Trail markers, 39 in total, will cost about $20,135. The rest of the cost will go toward bonding, two information kiosks, four educational panels and three signs, according to city documents.

In other business, Williams announced the Arkansas Supreme Court issued its mandate noon Tuesday in a civil case to sell the old City Hospital land to the

Fayetteville Public Library from Washington Regional Medical Center. Justices in March upheld a lower court ruling identifying Washington Regional as the rightful owner of the land just south of the library.

An 18-day window to file for a rehearing closed Monday. Heirs of the Stone family, who donated the land to the

city a century ago, previously challenged the $2 million sale in court, saying the family’s original charitable intent hadn’t been honored.

“We carefully followed the Stones’ deeds which conveyed the land to the city to be held in trust for hospital purposes,” Williams wrote in a memo to Jordan and the council. “We faithfully followed their generous intent to benefit the health care for Fayetteville citizens by conveying this property to Washington Regional.”

The library will basically double in size with a proposed $49 million expansion onto the adjacent land. Voters in August approved a millage increase to pay for about $26.5 million of the cost.

Library Executive Director David Johnson said he expects to close on the land deal soon. The library can make the purchase within 30 days of the title being cleared.