John Nelson, left, project site manager with Triad Associates Inc., presents the Kosciusko County Department of Parks and Recreation Board with the latest information concerning the Chinworth trail extension along Old 30. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — A bid for phase I of the Chinworth Trail extension could be awarded as early as August, and a display on the county trails master plan will be at the Fat & Skinny Tire Festival this weekend.

John Nelson, project site manager with Triad Associates Inc., presented the Kosciusko County Department of Parks and Recreation Board with preliminary surveyor information on the trail extension that goes from Chinworth Bridge to Crazy Egg Café.

“I wanted to get you guys something to look at, touch, feel, mark up, chew up, comment on. As you sift through these drawings, please note the alignment — as we’ve talked about all along — is on the south side of the right-of-way (of Old 30),” Nelson said.

He’s hoping to have better drawings for the board by their June 20 meeting “to the point where we’re really close to going out to meet with the landowners, have that meeting at the Crazy Egg, talk about any issues. And then your July meeting, we should be at the bidding point,” he stated.

Board member Matt Metzger said he went out to the area Thursday morning and saw a bunch of flags. He asked Nelson if those were related to the trail extension.

Nelson replied that those were utility locates that had to be done to see where any and all conflicts are. “So part of the delay was NIPSCO getting there and locating their utilities. We had to wait on them, which I believe all utilities are located right now,” he said.

The surveyor drawings came in just this week, so Nelson said they weren’t able to lay in the topography and profiles.

“You’ll actually see the alignment of the trail related to the surface contours in the profile,” he said.

Metzger then pointed out that it appeared that the trail extension went past Crazy Egg. Nelson said that’s what he wanted to talk to the board about — where do they see the trail ending. He said, personally, he would take the trail to Crazy Egg and “dive it in” at their first driveway, knowing that in the future they could always extend it. If they extend it past Crazy Egg, people using the trail would have to turn around and come back because the trail would end at no specific place.

Mike Cusick, board member, said if there was only enough funding to extend the trail 0.8 mile, then that’s where they’re at.

However, if there’s enough American Rescue Plan Act allocation to get to the next crossroads, then they should take it to there.
Board President Rob Bishop said County Surveyor Mike Kissinger was looking into, for him, how the railroad and Old 30 right-of-way interact down that stretch because there’s not a ton of space.

“Until we get a survey to know exactly where those rights-of-way are, it’s going to be hard to know at this point,” Nelson said.
Bishop then said it wasn’t the board’s intent for Crazy Egg to be a trailhead for the trail extension. “So I think we need to be careful about how much we terminate at their parking lot unless they would come back and say they’re happy with that, which I have an inkling that they would not be happy with that as they want their parking lots for their customers. So we need to make sure whatever we do that more than likely the Chinworth parking lot is the trailhead,” he stated.

Cusick brought up the width of the trail, and Nelson said right now it’s planned to be 8 feet wide as that’s typical. Winona Lake Town Manager Craig Allebach said the width of the Heritage Trail in Winona Lake is 12 feet wide and they don’t want the trails to be any less than 12 feet wide if and when space allows.

Nelson said they could certainly look at going wider, but the ditch along there has to be re-established.

“We’ve got an edge of pavement, a shoulder, we have to re-establish the ditch before we get to the trail and we have the right-of-way, so I’m not sure if 12 will work,” he said.

Understanding the limitations, Cusick said he’d like to keep the conversation open that the preference would be for the trail to be wider. Nelson said if they can squeeze 10 feet in, that would be better than 8. Cusick said his concerns with the trail being only 8 feet wide were the speed of bikers riding along a straight trail and two people walking side by side take up about 8 feet.

Nelson told the board he has a spreadsheet of all the addresses, property owners, mailing addresses and Triad is ready to send out notices to property owners about a meeting at the Crazy Egg about the trail extension.

Board member Troy Turley asked Nelson if the project was going out for bids in July, when would they have some indication of what the extension would look like including width.

Nelson said he’s hoping to have updated drawings to the board by their June meeting to the point where they can then meet with the property owners. He said he didn’t want to take the project out to bid until after the meeting with property owners, but thought that by August they should be awarding the bid.

In one of her updates to the board about the county trails master plan, Katie Clark, landscape architect and project manager at Taylor Siefker Williams Design Group, said at the Fat & Skinny Tire Festival this weekend the mobile display will be out for people to see and interact with.

The display will be out Friday and Saturday, weather dependant, and the booth will be manned Sunday.

“So there will be team members there to talk to people. The mobile display has a lot of really easy activities where people can give us some quick and easy input that we’ll be able to use. But our goal is to really get the word out about the process itself, get people started to engage so we can kind of capture their information, maybe email addresses, in hopes that maybe we can kind of use that to fuel and promote our larger community workshops, which we are working on identifying dates for throughout June,” she explained.

Cusick told Clark that their mobile display will be located next to the information booth on Friday and Saturday.

The board approved a claim from TSW for the contract for $100,000, with $30,000 of that to be paid by a grant the town of Winona Lake received. The remaining $70,000 will be paid through county ARPA funds.