Officials seek additional grant money for Delta River Regional Park

Officials seek additional grant money for Delta River Regional Park

Recreational Trails Program could net effort $ 100,000

news@theeveningtimes.com

West Memphis is applying for another state grant to help build a quarter mile trail at the Delta River Regional Park from Dacus Road to the bank of the Mississippi River.

City Planner Paul Luker got approval from the Quorum Court to send the paperwork in to the Arkansas Highway Department seeking $100,000 through the Recreational Trails Program.

“We’ve had a couple of land owners offer to provide additional easements to make it a little easier for people who want to walk down and see the river bank,” Luker said. “What we have our eye on is for attaching on to that Main2Main trail. It will be about 40 feet over on their property and be a direct path to the river bank from Dacus Road.”

The project is part of Big River Crossing, a walking and bike path which opened in October and goes over the Harahan Bridge and connects West Memphis to Riverside Drive in Downtown Memphis.

West Memphis was awarded a $1.5 million grant in 2016 to develop a 5.5 mile trail from the end of Big River Crossing north under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge using Dacus Lake Road and Robinson Road.

“We’ve got the first phase under construction now,” Luker said. “We’re going to have a trail in that phase that shoots off Dacus Road and goes to the bank of the river and goes north under Interstate 40 and ties back into Robinson Road in the general area of Dacus Lake. That’s what is under construction now.”

The $100,000 would be used to construct another path to the bank of the river from Dacus Road.

“This trail would hook onto the Main2Main Trail by the bridge onto the county road just north of that and go to the river,” Luker said. “This will be a more manageable walk for average users. People want to get to the bank of the river so this will be something that is more accessible to more people just because it is a shorter distance.”

The grant will require a 20 percent match from the county, but Luker said they plan to raise the matching funds through private sources.

“The way it is written the county would be on the hook for the match. But we aren’t asking the county to do that because we are trying to raise that by other means,” Luker said. “We have a private benefactor who has been helping in the past and paying for a lot of the engineering. We’ve been very fortunate to have private owners putting their money in to this. We’re not going to put the grant in until we know that the match is taken care of. If we don’t get it, we won’t put the grant in. And if the match fell through. We won’t accept the grant.”

The grant application is due May 1.

Luker said they expect to be notified by the state in either August or sometime in the late fall.

“They say August but sometimes it is October or late fall,” Luker said. “It may even be December before we hear back.”

By Mark Randall