New Multi-Use Path Set For Construction This Summer

By mid to late summer, bike riders, joggers, rollerbladers and walkers will have a new multi-use trail.

Highlands County Engineer Ramon Gavarette announced that a new multi-use trail will be built along College Drive, running from U.S. 27, past the South Florida Community College campus, to Memorial Drive.

At Memorial Drive, the eight-foot-wide, asphalt trail will head north and run up to the intersection of Memorial and Cornell Drive. From Cornell Drive, Gavarette said, existing sidewalks will link the trail into Avon Park.

"It's great news," Bob Hodge, president of the Highlands Pedalers Club, said about the new multi-use trail. "Any area would be enhanced by more cycling infrastructure."

The new trail, from U.S. 27 to Cornell Drive, will stretch 3.5 miles, but the project may be expanded.

"If we have enough money, we'll also go south on Memorial (from College Drive) to the new Memorial Elementary School, and that would add another mile," Gavarette said.

Grants from the Federal Highway Administration passed on to the county by the Florida Department of Transportation will cover nearly all of the estimated $1.7 million cost, Gavarette said.

"The only thing that the county is paying for is the design for the permitting, and that is being done with the (county's) one penny sales tax," Gavarette said.

SFCC has agreed to pay half the cost for the design of signals for two pedestrian crossings on the path that will go across College Drive.

Norm Stephens, president of SFCC, said the new trail will be "a nice addition to the campus area ... and a nice addition to the community.

"We've worked with the county on this for several years," he added. "It was already on the drawing board when I came here seven years ago."

To date, only about 15 percent of the trails called for in a countywide master plan adopted in 2000 have been constructed.

Existing multi-use trails include the asphalt path along Hammock Road from U.S. 27 to Highlands Hammock State Park, the sidewalk around Lake Jackson, and the sidewalk running along the finished portions of Sebring Parkway. Multi-use paths have also been built in Sun 'n Lake of Sebring, Placid Lakes, and east of Lake Grassy near Lake Placid.

Hodge said that outside of the heavily travelled main roads, "there are a lot of nice places to ride in the county. And the people driving cars in general are very courteous. I want to commend the drivers of Highlands County for being so considerate of bike riders."

Even so, Hodge said, multi-use trails are a great addition.

"That's particularly important for younger riders and beginning riders," he said, "because they are less safe on the roadways."

Gavarrette said the county engineer's office is designing the new multi-use trail and he expects to seek bids for construction in April or May.