Editorial: Urban trails essential to our healthy community

A generation after it began, urban trailblazing continues to expand recreation opportunities across Spokane County. The new hiking and bicycle paths may lack the romance of the covered-wagon era, but the health and economic benefits will be just as long-lasting.

Initially resisted because landowners feared they would lower property values and give criminals more access to suburban areas, the Centennial Trail and others are now considered so desirable developers exert considerable effort to incorporate them into their plans.

That’s certainly the case with Kent Hull, developer of the Iron Bridge office park, part of which runs along the east bank of the Spokane River. Hull has tried for more than a decade to link the park’s internal trails to the Centennial Trail on the west bank. But in upgrading the park’s namesake bridge for nonmotorized use, he kept encountering environmental, safety and other issues. Finally, work is under way.

Park tenants will be the immediate beneficiaries of the connection to the Centennial Trail, but Hull says planners envision a connection to the Ben Burr Trail when the extension of Martin Luther King Jr. Way goes forward.

The Centennial Trail itself will be improved this year, with an underpass below the new Appleway Bridge at the state line and a long-, long-, long-awaited extension through Kendall Yards. Developer Jim Frank was a trail supporter early on, and he committed to the link tracing the north rim of the Spokane River gorge when he acquired the development in 2009.

Last week, work that will include overlooks and a small park began. The Kendall Yards section will take the trail from Monroe Street to the switchbacks down to the Paul Sandifur Bridge. An old railroad right-of-way below Summit Boulevard will take the trail some ways west from there when funds become available, but blanks remain for some stretches out to Long Lake.

The Kendall Yards section may be the trail’s most scenic on the Washington side of the border. The park name, Olmsted Brothers Green, will be a fitting tribute to the famed landscape designers who recognized the gorge’s potential a century ago.

Meanwhile, Spokane Valley and Spokane County are near an agreement that would convert old Milwaukee Railroad right-of-way to trail uses instead of an Appleway extension.

Trail projects are not cheap. Work on the Iron Bridge will cost about $1 million, the Kendall Yards section $2 million. The money will come from a mix of grants and other sources. But people walk, run, skate or bike the Centennial Trail an estimated 2 million times each year. Many are conventioneers or other visitors boosting the area’s economy.

Twenty years after the first sections were constructed, it is difficult to recall a region with a trail that did not invite bikers to saddle up at the east end of Lake Coeur d’Alene and cruise all the way to Spokane and beyond. Urban trails have become an essential element to quality of life in cities all over the United States. Each extension takes Inland Northwest residents another step toward a healthier life.