Easement to Building Olympic Place Trail Accepted by City Commission
Decatur Metro | July 19, 2013 | 2:12 pmI guess this is what is meant by LATE breaking news. Get your Decatur City Commission news four days later! It’s like a cellared craft beer, it improves with age. :-/
At Monday’s City Commission meeting, the commissioners accepted a conservation easement in order to build a trail between Ansley and Olympic Place. The item on the agenda reads as such…
The purpose of this memo is to recommend that the City Commission authorize the Mayor to execute all documents necessary to accept a conservation easement for the purposes of building a trail on the properties at 535 Ansley Street and 238 Olympic Place. The City Commission authorized funding to obtain surveys, legal services and trail designs for up to three trails on Olympic Place. The owners of the property at the end of Olympic Place, Fisher and Karen Paty, have donated a 10 foot wide conservation easement on their property to connect Ansley Street and Olympic Place. This easement area will be used for a trail that the City will construct and maintain.
After the vote, the commissioners thanked the Paty family for providing this easement and noted that many residents were looking forward to taking a more direct route to Oakhurst Village in the near future.
Will this be an actual trail for real? Meaning unpaved? Or are they talking about a paved pathway. I’m a runner (trail running too) and there is a difference. Personal pet peeve of mine is people just throwing the word “trail” around willy nilly.
Really?
Actually, I was wondering the same thing, and it does make a difference. Not complaining either way, I am happy just to have this path–whether paved or not. It’s nice to have the natural feel of a trail, but it may be just as difficult to install and maintain as a concrete path. Maybe refining the semantics, ie, “path” for paved and “trail” for unpaved, would help to be more clear.
My understanding is there is an effort to get what was formerly an alley closer to College Avenue spanning from Olympic Place to Mead Road re-opened. It would be great for those of us who walk, bike, or scoot to school on College Avenue, providing an alternative to walking down the sidewalk with very little space between cars zooming by (while drivers are texting, talking on the cell, putting on makeup, etc). I think there are just a few property owners who are opposed to it. What I don’t understand is, if it was once an alley, thus public property, and it was closed off by property owners by fences…then why can’t the city reclaim the alley?
At any rate–yay! I’m so glad this passed. Good news. I hope this paves the way for re-opening the alley (pun intended).
I’m guessing that if this is a city project and it’ll be serving as the only connection between Olympic and Ansley, they’ll be meeting ADA requirements for disabled access. That likely means a paved or hardtop surface of some kind, though it wouldn’t surprise me if the city was amenable to alternative surfaces that are ADA-friendly but also rainwater permeable and softer on the knees.
As for the alley, yes, it was an adjacent property owner closing off a public right-of-way but, as I recall, they went before the city commission for permission (or to ask forgiveness… can’t remember exactly). Either way, I believe it was done at a time when the area had considerably less foot traffic than we have now and there was a perceived sketchiness factor with many of those ambling through. Thus, now that our context has changed significantly, and walking to school is far more prevalent than it was then, it may be time to revisit the issue and restore the connection. The benefit to the greater community probably outweighs individual concerns at this point, though I’m sure there’ll be much debate about it.
I should say walking to school “along College” is more prevalent. There may have always been lots of walking within the neighborhood.
YAY!!!!
That will be great for the new neighbors on the south end of Olympic.
I’m guessing trail means “no motorized vehicles” and will probably be paved like the one at Green St. I don’t know, just a guess, but YAY!
Kudos to the Paty family!
Lived here 20+ years and had to look at a map. How un-fun it must be to live on Olympic Place and want to stroll to the pub.
Thank you Paty family! This provides another route to the village for others of us north of the tracks near Olympic too (ie benefit not just for Olympic St peeps). Looking forward to using it when it is ready. Kudos also to the City for working on this and continuing to increase connectivity throughout town.
Now if the City would execute that same plan between Garden Lane and Oakland…
+1
Get the house on the southeast corner of Lamont and Vidal on board and it can happen. Though if I were them, I’d nix it, because the creek runs way too close to their house as it is. As someone who lives on Garden and regularly walks downtown, I’d love to see this dream (it’s DM’s dream for sure!) come true, it just doesn’t seem feasible. I’d love to be proven wrong, of course…
….and keep on going through to connect to Coventry and/or Oakland….and onward.