Saline Considering Mill Pond Trail

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated what grants have been received and used and which have been received and not used. The current statement on the state of the use of funds is according to a Washtenaw County Park Commission official.

Finding ways to provide alternative transportation to automobiles has been a municipal and environmental topic in communities across the world for a long time now. Saline Mayor Brian Marl made it clear in his recent State of the City address that one way Saline is doing that is by attempting to create a pedestrian and bike pathway to connect Mill Pond Park together, emphasizing an ambition that this proposed trail would only be part of a much larger ambition to connect Saline to the rest of Washtenaw County.

“I had proposed several years ago a non-motorized pathway that ran the length of Mill Pond Park – getting us as close to the river and pond as possible – connecting the parking lot at the base of Mill Pond Park at Bennet Street, to the new sidewalk at Michigan Avenue and Mills [Road]. We completed the design of that project. Now we’re applying for grants to actually start to execute said project,” Marl said.

The trail would go from the new sidewalks on Michigan Avenue to Bennett Street. Saline has already used a $40,000 grant from 2019 from the Connecting Communities Grant program from Washtenaw County’s Parks and Recreation Commission to establish an engineering plan for the system. They have received a further $200,000 grant to continue the project for construction, according to Kira Macyda, the Principal Park Planner for the Washtenaw County Parks Commission.

“The program is open to basically all public entities in the County,” Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission Project Manager Peter Sanders said. “The goal is to improve non-motorized connectivity across the County. It can fund things like the Bothai Botanical Trail; several projects in Dexter that they have built like the boardwalk.”

The City is in the process of applying for more grants for future construction. Connecting Communities awards about half a million dollars in construction grants to municipalities across Washtenaw County every year, as well as about $100,000 for engineering, feasibility and planning costs. Saline will have until the end of April to submit their latest grant application. The decision will be made sometime at the end of this year.

City officials are exploring options for doing this through Connecting Communities, the Department of National Resources Passport program and the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation, a non-profit that helps funds career development, recreation development, elderly care and entrepreneurship throughout southeast Michigan and western New York State.

“There have been years where we couldn’t fund communities because there were so many projects in the works. There are other funding sources. If it is a park itself, there is the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund,” Macyda said. “If it is a real trails project, linking communities together … there’s the Transportation Alternatives Program that they can apply for.”

It is too early in the process to predict the actual cost of this project. The price of building a trail differs on factors like geography and what types of material need to be used. This means that the average cost per mile can vary from $500,000 to over $1 million per mile, according to Sanderson.

Saline Parks and Recreation Director Carla Scruggs said that the city estimated it would cost about $800,000 last year. Scruggs acknowledged that with the ongoing effects of supply chain disruption due to the Coronavirus, the price of materials and labor will likely have gone up since that report was completed.

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