By Matt Fredmonsky
Record-Courier staff writer
Outdoor enthusiasts will help cut the ribbon Saturday on the biggest project ever completed by the Kent Parks and Recreation Department.
The second of two long stretches of The Portage Hike and Bike Trail following the Cuyahoga River through Kent will open this weekend. Workers are expected to lay down the final layers of pavement today on the approximately 2-mile trail section leading from Middlebury Road near S.R. 261 along the river to Fred Fuller Park near S.R. 59.
John Idone, Kent’s parks and recreation director, said the approximately $1.35 million project represents his department’s largest construction endeavor to date.
Idone said the path ensures the area involved will remain protected while encouraging exercise and better health for area residents.
“The other thing that’s often overlooked is the economic benefit,” Idone said.
This section of Kent’s trail comes to an end near a vacant railroad line running along S.R. 261 into Tallmadge. The Metro Parks Serving Summit County currently is designing the “Freedom Secondary,” a bike and hike path that will link up with Kent’s trail and eventually connect The Portage to the 33.5-mile trail running through Summit County.
“Us doing this spurred the Summit County Metro Parks,” Idone said.
In the fall, Kent opened a section of the trail stretching from the Crain Avenue Bridge to Towner’s Woods. Construction of the new Fairchild Avenue Bridge will incorporate a bridge spanning the trail over the Cuyahoga River, with the trail extending along the west bank.
The next step for Kent is to develop a trail head at Fred Fuller Park for the trail opening up Saturday with a parking lot and continue the trail to the bridge at the Kramer Field baseball complex. The city has applied for $250,000 in Clean Ohio Trails Fund money for this project.
In 2013, Kent will use about $700,000 in Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study funding to extend the trail from Fred Fuller Park to John Brown Tannery Park.
The trail opening Saturday features a massive span across the Cuyahoga River and a wide, wooden boardwalk that skirts around the Kent Water Reclamation Facility along the river’s edge.
Thursday Idone walked the as-yet unopened trail and smiled to the handful of people who had already found, and begun using, the path.
“This back through here rivals the Cuyahoga Valley,” Idone said.