Approval given to add mile to greenway

Germantown aldermen OK work on two segments

Germantown is ready to move forward with two new sections of the city’s greenway system.

Aldermen this week approved a professional services agreement with Smith Seckman and Reid for about $373,000 and another roughly $26,000 with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to begin work on two segments of the greenway — a segment of about 0.4 miles connecting the western end of the greenway to Neshoba Park, and a segment of about three-quarters of a mile on the east from Cameron Brown Park to an east trailhead at Farmington Boulevard.

When completed the segments will extend the existing 1.3-mile greenway segment running along the Wolf River to about 2.4 miles total, from the city’s western edge near Germantown Parkway to the new eastern trailhead at Farmington.

The design work approved unanimously by aldermen Monday is part of the $2.4 million approved by the board for the design and construction of the project.

“It is expensive, no doubt about it,” City Engineer Tim Gwaltney said in response to questions from some aldermen over the project’s cost, “but it is a class A facility.”

Most of the $2.4 million in funding for the project is coming from federal and state sources received through the Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization. The city will be reimbursed 80 percent of the total, leaving the city’s share of the cost at just less than $500,000. The city will own the property, but its use cannot be altered at any point because of the use of federal money.

“I’m just trying to understand,” Al-

derman Dean Massey said before ultimately joining other aldermen to vote for the project to proceed. “This seems like a lot of money to be spending.” Alderman Rocky Janda agreed. But Alderman Forrest Owens, a big proponent of the city’s outdoor and recreational amenities, defended the 10-foot-wide, 2.4-mile trail as critical to the city’s quality of life.

“You’ll have a linear path that at no point will you have to get in the roadway and can eventually go from Collierville to Midtown Memphis,” Owens said of the trail system that is part of the area’s larger vision of a trail system running the width of the county. “It’s hard to quantify qualityof-life things, but I get constant comments from people about how overjoyed they are to have it. It will add to the quality of life and enhance our livability.”

The 1.3-mile existing section included parking, restroom facilities and a plaza area at the western trailhead at Kimbrough. That project, running roughly parallel to Wolf River Boulevard, was completed in April.

City Administrator Patrick Lawton said construction of the new segments will begin in fiscal 2018.