Bridge will help connect Amerson park, Riverside Cemetery with Ocmulgee trail

Long-standing plans to connect the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail with Amerson River Park and Riverside Cemetery are in the works after the 2016 Leadership Macon class announced Wednesday that it will raise money for a necessary bridge to start the two-mile path.

Connecting the park and cemetery on the west side of the Ocmulgee River with the existing 11 miles of trails is “a big deal,” Ruth Sykes, media contact for the class project, told dozens of people gathered at a trail end on the east side of the river.

“This project is expected to be complete by November. .... It will include the construction of a major bridge over a significant gully and several smaller foot bridges.”

The class, made up of about 40 people, will provide the physical labor and help raise the estimated $95,000 needed to complete the extension. Donations to help with the project can be made through NewTown Macon, and there are opportunities for naming rights, Sykes said.

Josh Rogers, president and chief executive office for NewTown Macon, said there have long been plans to connect the park and cemetery to the trail, but a $2 million price tag has thwarted the effort.

However, there came a less costly opportunity to connect the park and cemetery in May with a rudimentary trail made of gravel. Rogers said the Macon Water Authority needed to build a $250,000 access road along the river to reline sewer pipes, so NewTown Macon “decided to spend another $250,000 from local donors to put in the gravel.”

While it was hardly the $2 million scenic trail envisioned, it was progress.

“We just sort of fixated on, ‘People needed to be able to walk from (Riverside) Cemetery to Amerson (River Park),’ and that was it,” Rogers said. “I did not expect we’d get this first section done.”

The steel bridge the class plans to build over an 80-foot-wide gully will be the first piece of the $2 million path envisioned, Rogers said.

“They’ll probably be done with their bridge before we’re done with the gravel trail now,” Rogers said, adding that NewTown must wait on MWA contractors to complete work on the sewer lines before gravel is added.

When all is said and done, the two-mile extension will make the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail total 13 miles. Twenty years ago, not a single stretch of path existed along the river.

“The river was one of our most forgotten and probably our most valuable underused asset,” Rogers said.

The first section of the trail — from the Otis Redding Bridge to Spring Street — was built in 2001 with funding help from the Peyton Anderson Foundation. The trail remains a public-private partnership of agencies and government, including the state Department of Natural Resources and Macon-Bibb County, which manages the trail as a public park. The trail also extends north of Spring Street toward Jackson Springs Park in the Shirley Hills neighborhood before ending abruptly at the dead end of Glenridge Drive.

“We’re at a trail end right now, but our vision is that there are no trail ends in the future. ... So people have walkable and bikeable access throughout Bibb County,” Rogers said at a news conference Wednesday.

About 100,000 people each year use the trail on the east side of the Ocmulgee at Spring Street.

With the May 2015 opening of Amerson River Park, once the site of the city’s water treatment facility, and the two-mile connecting trail to be blazed, Rogers said he expects the number of trail users will triple.

Once it’s completed, the trail will run along neighborhoods including the future Mill Hill Arts Village near Coliseum Drive, downtown and Intown, Pleasant Hill and Shirley Hills. When the Georgia Department of Transportation redevelops the Interstate 16/75 interchange, Rogers said it will leave a temporary bridge over the river for vehicles that will become a permanent pedestrian bridge.

Work on blazing the two-mile trail to Amerson River Park began about two weeks ago, said Edward Lowe of the Leadership Macon 2016 class.

“We’ve gotten to the bridge site and now we can start making plans for putting the bridge in itself,” Lowe said, adding that the class chose to build the bridge for its annual project because it wanted to do something that would have a lasting legacy. “This project is about fitness and recreation and relaxation. We’ll be able to take our grandkids here in 100 years or more.”

This story was originally published June 15, 2016 at 12:04 PM with the headline "Bridge will help connect Amerson park, Riverside Cemetery with Ocmulgee trail."