news-record.com

The city’s fledgling Downtown Greenway won’t be getting any money in the next round of allotments from Uncle Sam’s economic-recovery package.

But Guilford County is still getting a slice of $22 million in stimulus cash earmarked by North Carolina officials for pedestrian, biking and similar projects statewide.

Local planners now expect that roughly $650,000 in stimulus funds will go toward completing one of the last sections of the Guilford County Bicentennial Greenway.

“In our discussions with the (state) Department of Transportation, they agreed to fund it as an alternative,” Tyler Meyer, the city’s chief transportation planner, said of the Bicentennial project.

The Downtown Greenway ran into scheduling questions that made it impractical for consideration as a stimulus project, Meyer said.

The Downtown Greenway is a 4.8-mile recreational loop around the center city with landscaping, lighting, benches and works of art. Formally proposed in 2007 to commemorate the city’s 200th birthday last year, it is being built by a public-private partnership that includes nonprofit Action Greensboro and the city.

The Bicentennial Greenway is an initiative by county government that voters approved in a 1988 referendum to honor the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. It is a 16-mile linear pavement that eventually will provide a hiking and biking link between northern High Point and Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.

Infusing federal money into the Bicentennial Greenway means county officials can complete both the next section planned for construction, plus another link in the pathway that has been built in bits and pieces during the past 20 years, said Guilford parks planner Roger Bardsley.

When done in about two years, those sections will complete all that can be built of the pathway for the time being. A gap will remain for the foreseeable future in the vicinity of Interstate 40, a segment prohibitively complex and costly to build, but one that can be bypassed on area streets.

The section of the Bicentennial Greenway to be built with stimulus money goes from West Market Street to Ballinger Road, about 2 miles. It will be under way by late June, Bardsley said.

Both he and Meyer predict it will be among the area’s most heavily used sections of off-road pavement because it goes through a heavily populated area to such well-traveled spots as Western High School, Guilford Elementary and Leonard Recreation Center (on an already existing path).

“It’s almost the perfect section of greenway in that you have ready-made users living nearby and ready-made destinations,” Bardsley said.

No flaw or shortcoming in the Downtown Greenway caused its ouster from the list of pedestrian projects getting a stimulus boost, Meyer said,

It was just bad timing, he said. Part of the next section of the center-city project encroaches on railroad right-of-way, and officials couldn’t get approvals from Norfolk Southern in time.

State and federal authorities have tight deadlines on projects vying for stimulus cash, requiring trail or greenway recipients to be under way by June 30.

Meyer said the city was confident details could be worked out by then, but state officials wanted all issues resolved well in advance.

He said the city will continue working on the second segment of the downtown project so progress continues unabated.

The first section of the Downtown Greenway already is being built this spring from the ramp at Freeman Mill Road through the Greensboro College sports campus to South Eugene Street.

As for the Bicentennial Greenway, Guilford officials already have money set aside to build the West-Market-to-Ballinger section that now will get stimulus money, Bardsley said.

So that money will be diverted to finish the final, buildable segment between Old Oak Ridge and Horse Pen Creek roads.

“That’s what makes this a legitimate stimulus project,” Bardsley said. “We are able to construct much more than we would otherwise.”

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com