WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik requested the City Council to approve a Memorandum of Understanding to formalize the city’s partnership with the Friends of the Columbia Greenway.
The council voted Thursday night to send the request to accept the MOU to the Legislative & Ordinance Committee for further review.
Jeff LaValley, president of the Friends group, asked the council to endorse the agreement between his organization and the city to provide a legal foundation for the group to spend funds to enhance the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail which is currently being extended to the area of Main Street.
“The friends group, since 2008 or 2009, has been raising money for these enhancements,” LaValley said.
Some of the funds are being used to maintain the rail trail, in particular removing graffiti painted on the trail, and the three existing bridges between the Southwick Town Line and the current construction area between East Silver Street and Main Street.
LaValley said the Friends are preparing to erect “interpretive signs depicting the history of industrial Westfield at a cost of between $8,000 and $12,000.”
Those historical designation signs are currently being fabricated in accordance with the National Park Service sign requirements.
The current work, extending the trail from East Silver Street to the area of Main Street, was awarded in two phases to ET&L Corporation of Stow.
ET&L was hired in January on a separate contract for construction of a bridge over East Silver Street and an underpass connecting the Hedges Avenue and Taylor Avenue neighborhoods under a $700,000 contract under a $2 million Gateway Communities grant. That work is substantially completed.
ET&L was awarded a second contract to construct the rail trail and associated access ramps this spring and was awarded a third $1.2 million contract to construct an Esplanade at the juncture of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail and the Westfield River Levee Walk Trail.
The Esplanade contract will require the company to construct a multi-use trail between Elm and Sackett streets and will include construction of the Esplanade, a plaza area near the recently constructed overlook on the bank of the Westfield River. The contract also calls for installation of retaining walls to support the levee bank on which the trail will be constructed.
The rail trail project, because of the funding requirements, was divided into three phases, the South Phase, from Southwick to East Silver Street, the Central Phase, from East Silver Street through the downtown to Orange Street and the North Phase, from Orange Street across the Westfield River to Women’s Temperance Park.
The Central Phase comes with the highest price tag, an estimated $7 million because it involved replacement of bridges over East Silver Street, Main Street, Thomas Street, Chapel Street and Orange Street.
The former railroad bridge across Elm Street will not be replaced but it will be raised to increase clearance to 14 feet, 6 inches. The cost of rehabilitating and raising that structure is projects at $1.4 million.
Cressotti said the city is looking at all possible funding sources for construction of the Central Phase.
The high cost estimate is due to the fact that the former railroad is a raised structure running through the downtown. That fact is what makes the trail unique, there is only one other multi-use raised trail in the country, but also creates other issues, such as privacy and funding.
The North Phase, rehabilitation of the former railroad bridge over the Westfield River is currently on the Transportation Improvement Project funding list for $2.2 million that would become available in the fall of 2015, the start of the federal fiscal year 2016. The federal year begins on Oct 1 of the previous calendar year.
