Trail Bridge Site Selected High Bridge Park Chosen After Six Years Of Debate

It wasn’t their first choice - or even their second - but after six years of debate, Centennial Trail planners have settled on a site for a showcase wooden bridge.

Now they must convince the U.S. Forest Service that a $440,000 grant that was supposed to expire in 1993 should be extended a third time, until the end of 2000. Then they have to raise another $2.1 million, probably from private donors, to build the bridge about 1-1/2 miles west of downtown Spokane.

The first of those hurdles may be the easier of the two. Most of the money used to build the trail so far came from the state and federal government nearly 10 years ago. Congress and the Legislature have provided little in recent years.

On the other hand, the Forest Service showed the patience of Job as trail builders debated where to spend the money granted in 1991. Agency officials said this year that the money would go to some other community if plans didn’t jell by Dec. 31.

On Monday, Bill Fraser of the state Parks and Recreation Commission mailed a proposal for putting the bridge across existing abutments that stand in the river at High Bridge Park. The concrete stumps supported Union Pacific Railroad tracks for 60 years ending in the mid-1970s, when the railroad dismantled the tracks.

“I talked to (the Forest Service) Friday,” Fraser said. “They indicated that the information we’re sending them demonstrates good progress” and probably warrants an extension until 2000.

The High Bridge site is one of many considered over the years.

State officials had hoped to use the money for a bridge near Nine Mile Dam. High costs and engineering nightmares killed that idea.

Other trail boosters wanted the bridge to link the West Central neighborhood to the wooded riverfront that is part of Riverside Cemetery and the Sister of the Holy Names convent.

Neither the nuns nor the cemetery welcomed the trail, so the bridge was moved about a half-mile downstream, to the abutments that stand at a bend in the river.

Under the High Bridge proposal, trail users would use road shoulders on either side of the bridge. A separate trail is planned by Metropolitan Mortgage Co. for a housing and commercial development on the north bank.

Mixing cars with runners, walkers, bicyclists and skaters is exactly what trail builders hoped to avoid by putting the bridge at the convent or cemetery, said Nancy Gunn Harsha, executive director of Friends of the Centennial Trail.

On the plus side, the High Bridge site will link the Centennial Trail to a city-owned corridor leading to Fish Lake. From that lake near Cheney, the state plans to develop a trail to Pasco, linking with other trails that cross the Cascade Mountains.

Although broken in places, the trail spans most of the distance from east of Coeur d’Alene to the north end of Riverside State Park.

With the links provided by the proposed new bridge and cross-state trails, a walker or bicyclist could travel mostly on trails from Lake Coeur d’Alene nearly to Seattle. It would be “the model intra-state trail in the United States,” said Gunn Harsha.

Gunn Harsha said the Friends group plans a “classic capital campaign” for the bridge. Members will solicit money from corporations, foundations and individuals, and perhaps the state Legislature.

So far, Centennial Trail boosters have avoided tapping individual donors for big projects. Most of the land used for trail in the Valley was obtained through a swap between Inland Empire Paper Co. and the state; AT&T did the paving in exchange for the right to bury a phone cable beneath the trail in the Valley; and the state and federal government contributed a combined $11.5 million in the late 1980s and early ‘90s for construction and studies.

Fraser said the plan he sent to the Forest Service calls for two years of fund raising, followed by construction between March and November 2000. The bridge could be done in 1999 if the money is raised faster than expected, he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo; Graphic: Centennial Trail update