Most waterfronts are empty after Labor Day, but not at Joe’s Pond in West Danville. The beach parking lot stays active there almost year-round since the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail opened in fall 2015. That’s been good for the businesses across Route 2, including Three Ponds Restaurant.
“Through the summer, we’re always getting cyclists in and in the winter, we have snowmobilers,” owner Caleb Clark said last week. “It definitely benefits us.”
Local civic leaders are now looking to bring the trail’s impact into the main village. The Danville Planning Commission held an open house on Saturday at a former railroad station on the Danville Peacham Road, currently the town’s recycling center, inviting residents to imagine it spruced up as a Welcome Center. The old building could be a place for rail trail users to fill a water bottle or warm up while learning about the stores, inn and café less than half a mile up the street.
Access to these amenities would be a boon for snowmobilers, said Ken Brown, Lamoille Valley Rail Trail coordinator for the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, which developed and maintains the trail. “People like to get out for a full-day ride or even multiple day rides, and you can’t carry a lot with you.”
Danville’s effort is just one of many across the region trying to bring traffic from popular recreational trails on the outskirts of communities into downtowns. Those behind the projects, funded in part by state and federal grant programs, see them as serving residents, visitors and local businesses alike.
In St. Johnsbury, the former railroad depot building has already been restored to Victorian-era glory. It houses a Welcome Center, town offices and the county’s winter farmers market. But it is cut off from the eastern start of Lamoille Valley Rail Trail by the infamous “honking tunnel,” a blind concrete railroad underpass, and a mile of industrial Bay Street.
A project now being designed includes traffic routing, lighting, signage and other safety improvements that will allow cyclists to start their journeys on Depot Street and pass safely through the tunnel, said Chad Whitehead, St. Johnsbury City Manager. It’s a short ride then to the LVRT trailhead and 17 miles of mostly flat terrain to West Danville. The Welcome Center, a block from the city’s main commercial street, “would be your shoving off point, your rendezvous point,” Whitehead said.
Scott’s Cove, a reedy Lake Memphremagog marsh off Prouty Beach in Newport, is a completely different landscape, but represents a similar barrier. It blocks cyclists and cross-country skiers on the Beebe Spur Trail, with roughly 56,000 visits annually, from getting to a multi-use path that ends at the Gateway Park in the center of the city. A $1.2 million project spearheaded by the Vermont Land Trust, fully funded this week after a public campaign, will build a pedestrian bridge there, along with a one-mile fully accessible path through the conserved Bluffside Farm.
The bridge will also connect the farm and North Country High School, just across the street from the beach, said Vermont Land Trust Conservation Director Tracy Zschau. Students do research and other projects there already, but currently have to take a bus. With the bridge in place, the community resource is just a short bike ride or walk away.
To the south, replacing a derelict pedestrian bridge is part of the site plan at the former Craftsbury Inn in Craftsbury Village. Construction is continuing on a new addition to that will result in an upgraded restaurant facility and new office space. A working bridge over the Black River would connect a Craftsbury Outdoor Center trail which already runs through the property to the back door.
To the east, Kingdom Trails, the non-profit mountain biking powerhouse based in Burke, is actively looking to partner with surrounding communities to connect its popular trail network with commercial centers, said Executive Director Abby Long.
Open since September, a new trailhead in tiny East Haven behind a former school turned community building is already drawing some of the Kingdom Trails network’s annual visitors – 115,000 in 2018 and counting — into Essex County for the first time. Residents there hope the added traffic will eventually help support a small general store there.
The organization is also talking with representatives of the Town of Lyndon about their plans for the town garage off Highway 114, Long said. Transforming that into a greenspace and trailhead could bring another new Kingdom Trails access point just a mile outside of Lyndonville.
The end goal of both initiatives is to spread the group’s economic impact around the area and reduce traffic and crowding in East Burke. But Kingdom Trails also sees bringing trails into closer proximity to communities as a way to enhance user experience. “We know they are not coming just to use our trails. They are coming to eat dinner or lunch and maybe buy maple syrup or stay overnight,” she said. “If they are in the downtown hubs then they can see what is available to them.”
Making that introduction for visitors to downtowns is a smart strategy, said Northeast Kingdom Collaborative Executive Director Katherine Sims. Each of these projects is unique to its location, but if successful as a group they provide models for other communities.
“Recreation is a powerful economic driver for our region and is only going to grow,” Sims said. “The beauty of these projects is they tap into that while enhancing outdoor opportunities for residents at the same time.”
