Bike trail under construction
10-foot wide path will run

from KC Road to 20th South

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- About half of the nearly 5 miles of New Ulm Recreational Trail project's $665,000 Phase I is ready for paving, according to contractor M R Paving & Excavating Co. of New Ulm.

However, Project Supervisor Tony Berdan said actual paving wouldn't start for about a week.

"We want to get a little farther along with the dirt work before we start paving because that will go faster."

Beginning in early April, M R Paving's crew began working on the trail bed at its starting point on KC Road. They've been forming the dirt and laying gravel in preparation for laying down a 10-foot-wide asphalt path.

Berdan said the crew was working behind Mueller Park Tuesday.

The Phase I trail -- which, for much of the way, parallels the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad tracks -- ends at 20th South Street. Phases 2A and 2B are to continue the trail southwest along 20th South Street and, following the bluff below the Schell's Brewery, slope down into Flandrau State Park.

City officials were set to include Phase 2A preparations in the city's 2005 Capital Improvement Program. However, city officials then reported being notified that the DNR was re-considering the decision to build the Phase 2B segment within the park.

"That's true; we have reconsidered on that, actually. When we got around to actually looking at the project with regard to it coming through the park, there were both costs issues that we weren't prepared to deal with and resource issues," DNR South Region Park Manager Steve Kirch, Rochester, explained.

Resource issues revolved around the trail's alignment through the park, Kirch said.

"There's serious erosion of the bank on the Cottonwood River that we would need to do a great amount of work to just stabilize that bank so that we didn't lose the trail eventually."

After having notified the city that the DNR wouldn't be going ahead with the trail development in the park, Kirch said he and DNR Development Manager Larry Peterson met with Sen. Dennis Frederickson, R-New Ulm, early in the 2004 session to discuss the trail matter.

"We told him we would need to come through and do a better feasibility study. In other words, (we would need to) understand really where that trail should be aligned within the park and then understand what those costs might be. So, we told him that's the direction we would like to go."

So, the DNR's withdrawal from the recreational trail project is not a given anymore, Kirch said.

"We didn't establish a time frame, but that's mainly because we've been so busy with other higher (priority) development projects right now. I would guess that it would be our hope that we could get it done here within the next year."