Waynesboro continues struggle to establish greenway

Jim Nichols is only half-joking when he says he hopes to walk on a finished piece of the Waynesboro greenway before he dies.

The former Waynesboro school principal, who turned to civic efforts in his retirement, set his sights on a greenway project a dozen years ago.

Today, he has a half-foot-thick three-ring binder stuffed with maps and documents and little else to show for the effort.

Since Nichols, 77, formed a committee on the idea in 1998, the world’s tallest building, the 160-floor, 2,716-foot, $1.5-billion Burj Khalifa, has been constructed in Dubai. The Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest electricity plant, has been built by the Chinese. Staunton has finished its “Big Dig.”

But Waynesboro has yet to lay its first mile of greenway.

That, Nichols said, matches a pattern in Waynesboro: “We have a habit of not proceeding,” he said.

City officials said a section of the greenway stretching along the South River from Constitution Park to Loth Springs finally will be constructed. A public hearing on a grant application for the second phase is scheduled for Monday.

Officials acknowledged that progress on the greenway has been slow, with more than a decade passing since its conceptualization. Greenway backers remain hopeful that economic development and quality-of-life benefits will emerge along with the greenway’s completion.

Still, the wheels of government appear unlikely to turn at a faster rate.

“It always takes a long time to get anything done,” Councilman Tim Williams said. “That’s the way government is supposed to work. You’re not supposed to be able to snap your fingers and get things done. Government isn’t designed to do a whole lot. It’s working the way our founding fathers planned for it to.”

Williams’ successor as mayor, Frank Lucente, agreed.

“I’ve been trying to boot it for five years, but it just goes at a snail’s pace,” Lucente said of the greenway. “That’s just the way government works. It’s bad when you want something done and good when you don’t want something done.”

Plans for a citywide pedestrian and biking trail system originated with the Waynesboro South River Greenway Steering Committee, formed in 1998 and chaired by Nichols. The group spent months meticulously gathering data before making a formal recommendation for the project to the city manager.

An economic development expert backs up the committee’s claims the greenway would bring numerous benefits to the city.

“Greenways support tourism-related services, increase property values, offer safe and healthy alternatives to automobile travel and preserve open spaces,” said Bonnie Riedesel, executive director of the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission.

The Central Shenandoah Valley Greenway Plan, produced by the commission in 2004, includes 90 recommendations for greenway and open space projects in the region.

The city’s greenway also fits the commission’s plans to use Virginia Tourism Corporation money to market the Valley as a destination for cyclists, Riedesel said.

The city first applied in 1999 for grant money to create a conceptual plan for a greenway system linking major neighborhoods, schools, shopping areas and parks, Assistant City Manager Jim Shaw said.

In subsequent years, the city secured additional federal transportation money for construction of the trail and a streetscape project.

After streetscape construction, the city has $480,000 in grant money for the greenway. The city must match that at a rate of 20 percent, or almost $100,000 in local tax money.

The money will be used to build the first section along the South River. After a review of plans by the Virginia Department of Transportation took longer than expected, Shaw said he hopes construction will begin by March.

The City Council is set to hold a public hearing Monday on a grant application to secure state transportation money to engineer and construct a second phase of the greenway.

Shaw said turnover of city staff, high project costs and a tedious land easement procurement process have slowed the greenway’s progress.

“A rule of thumb with greenway trails, if it’s a paved trail, some people say it costs about $1 million per mile of trail,” Shaw said. “That considers paving, grading, landscaping, benches, all that kind of stuff. In some places its more, where grading is more expensive or fences have to be built. If you have to put a bridge structure in, that becomes a six-figure improvement in itself.”

Waynesboro’s greenway isn’t following the rule, Shaw said. The total cost of the first mile, a 10-foot wide asphalt trail, is about $600,000.

The city scaled back plans after original estimates came in at $900,000.

“We just don’t have that kind of money to apply to this thing,” Shaw said. “We had to take out a number of things. For example, the original plans called for a fitness circle with different places with equipment to work out on and we had to pull that out.”

Aside from $300,000 in bonds issued for the project in 2007, Shaw said the city plans to complete the remaining 19 miles of trail over several decades as grant money for the project is secured.

“Certainly, localities can choose to contribute their own dollars,” Shaw said. “This is a great amenity, but when you start talking about building wastewater treatment plants and maintaining roads, how much are you really going to be able to dedicate to this over time?”

Further, the city must secure easements from private property owners along the trail, a process that can take more than a year with a cooperative land owner, Shaw said.

To make the process easier, the city code now requires contractors building new subdivisions to give easements to portions of land where trails from the greenway master plan are included.

And, Shaw said, greenway routes can be adjusted to avoid uncooperative property owners’ land.

Despite the hurdles, Nichols said he remains anxious to see progress.

“We talk it to death,” he said, “because we don’t want to put up any money of our own or there are other priorities. There’s always an excuse.”