Johnson / Millenium Park

[cramer]

By coincidence, I see in the Advance newspaper an article on Kent trails and how much it has grown and how much it costs to maintain. Here is a quote from the article: "....an annual total maintenance cost of $20,000 for the first 10 years and $25,000 annually for the next 10, with the Kent County Parks Department paying half and the other half being charged to the remaining five partners based on the original formula based on how many miles of trails were in the community"

and here is a link to the article:
http://www.mlive.com/walker/index.ssf/2011/11/kent_trails_management_agreeme.html

Here's an idea..... Not sure what is involved with these maintenance costs but suppose the MMBA proposes to maintain or help maintain those existing trails in exchange for allowing us to build some singletrack in Millenium Park or Johnson Park??? I'm guessing some of the maintenance is grass mowing and brush trimming? Just thinking if we saved the parks dept. some cash well you know how money talks Just another idea and maybe this has been thrown on the table already.....

We have to deal with maintenance with the trail here in Cannon Township and we just got done examining our budget for this so it's fresh in my mind. It seems like in our case, the regular maintenance of picking up trash, removing deadfall and pruning trees is all done currently by volunteers and we have plenty of people willing to do this. I suspect Kent Trails is in the same situation, I know the White Pine Trail also has a large group of volunteers for this. For clearing leaves and mowing, the county has the equipment to make short work of that type of stuff and in fact they help us with that work on the Cannon Township Paved Trail.

The stuff that costs real money is too expensive to justify WMMBA money going there and it's outside of what volunteers can do. This includes damage to structures from dead trees landing on them and repairing root damage to the trail surface and trying to prevent it by trenching on either side of the trail. There is also repairing damage caused by vandals or snowmobiles with studded tires illegally riding on the trail. On top of that, the pavement itself has a limited lifespan so budgeting for eventually repaving the entire trail is important as well as replacing old bridges.

[Mike_D]

By coincidence, I see in the Advance newspaper an article on Kent trails and how much it has grown and how much it costs to maintain. Here is a quote from the article: "....an annual total maintenance cost of $20,000 for the first 10 years and $25,000 annually for the next 10, with the Kent County Parks Department paying half and the other half being charged to the remaining five partners based on the original formula based on how many miles of trails were in the community"

and here is a link to the article:
http://www.mlive.com/walker/index.ssf/2011/11/kent_trails_management_agreeme.html

Here's an idea..... Not sure what is involved with these maintenance costs but suppose the MMBA proposes to maintain or help maintain those existing trails in exchange for allowing us to build some singletrack in Millenium Park or Johnson Park??? I'm guessing some of the maintenance is grass mowing and brush trimming? Just thinking if we saved the parks dept. some cash well you know how money talks Just another idea and maybe this has been thrown on the table already.....

We have to deal with maintenance with the trail here in Cannon Township and we just got done examining our budget for this so it's fresh in my mind. It seems like in our case, the regular maintenance of picking up trash, removing deadfall and pruning trees is all done currently by volunteers and we have plenty of people willing to do this. I suspect Kent Trails is in the same situation, I know the White Pine Trail also has a large group of volunteers for this. For clearing leaves and mowing, the county has the equipment to make short work of that type of stuff and in fact they help us with that work on the Cannon Township Paved Trail.

The stuff that costs real money is too expensive to justify WMMBA money going there and it's outside of what volunteers can do. This includes damage to structures from dead trees landing on them and repairing root damage to the trail surface and trying to prevent it by trenching on either side of the trail. There is also repairing damage caused by vandals or snowmobiles with studded tires illegally riding on the trail. On top of that, the pavement itself has a limited lifespan so budgeting for eventually repaving the entire trail is important as well as replacing old bridges.

All good points. I forgot about the "Friends of the White Pine Trail" or whatever they call themselves probably doing a bunch of volunteer work already which like you said isn't figured into the budget. They should have left the trails a natural surface.... Like what we like to ride They could have saved the taxpayers some $$$ It's the gift that keeps on giving

[nate.phelps]

I just had this conversation w/ my wife after complaining about having to drive out of the city to find a decent trail.
I've seem in the past that they chalk out a trail for cross country running, I wonder if it goes into the woods at all? If not it would make for a good cross ride.

On the subject of G.R. parks does anyone know about a trail being developed in the southern part of town, maybe even in Wyoming? I remember seeing something about it in the paper but forget the name of the park.

We have the ability to work with the city of Wyoming on a trail, it's just that every time I start the process the volunteers dry up.

Although not deep into the south side of GR, there will be expansion this year at the Bike Park. Think 3 mile long pump track.

[ignition16]

I bet we would be able to find some volunteers if something like this were to get started on the southwest side of town. I know Tom has had big troubles out at Bass River getting volunteers though. I would be curious to see how many zip codes like 49544, 49428, 49426, 49418, 49424, 49464, and 49423 showed up in that Luton Park sign-in book. The Southwest side (and toward Holland) is really no-man's land at this point. I live in Jenison, and all 4 of the closest trails are 25-35 minutes away.

I guess the new Holland trail will be the new closest thing for a fair amount of us. We just need to show up and show our support for nearby trails.

[Mike_D]

Anyone see the "Mackinac Bridge" in Millenium Park over Maynard yet???

Amazing how tax payer monies can be spent on that but not a single area of that large expanse can be set aside for a self sustaining multi-use running/biking/hiking/xc skiing/snowshoeing singletrack trail in the park

[SlowPoke]

Anyone see the "Mackinac Bridge" in Millenium Park over Maynard yet???

Amazing how tax payer monies can be spent on that but not a single area of that large expanse can be set aside for a self sustaining multi-use running/biking/hiking/xc skiing/snowshoeing singletrack trail in the park

Every time I ride over that, I think the same thing then I get the crazy old Joni Mitchell song in my head.


To develop the maser plan for the park, I think someone walked all the two tracks and single tracks I had been riding and decided to pave all of them.

[Mike_D]

I went for a road ride last Friday afternoon in the 40 somethin' degree weather and hit the trails and was surprised to see a number of the trails were still ice covered. Jokingly, I was thinking sarcastically to myself, "Now if they are going to go and pave all these trails, the least they could do is plow them" Then, what really made me laugh is when I made my way around the west side across from the new "Taj Mahal" of a boat house for KAYAKS is that they actually had plowed the trail So not only do we spend taxpayer monies on paving them, we also plow them too??? And we haven't even talked about maintaining them with sealer or repaving after a few years. It's the gift that keeps on giving

[J_Roon]

I too longboard there and it would be perfect for a MTB single track. I'm down for lending a hand on getting this started. Opening up the park to MTB would greatly increase the amount of people going to the park. They've got disc golf, playground, baseball fields...why not add MTB?