A new, surprisingly controversial section of Brevard's Estatoe Trail opens to the public
Critics and proponents disagree over recreation priorities, but agree on the benefits of pushing forward with the bike path.
By Dan DeWitt
Brevard NewsBeat
BREVARD — Lucy Bradley jogs on the City of Brevard’s Estatoe Trail nearly every day, pushing her nine-month-old son in a double stroller to downtown Brevard, where she picks up an older child at a daycare center.
Though the stretch of the trail completed last week is only a few hundred yards long, it has created a safe, smooth path starting at the once-harrowing corner of McLean Road and Railroad Avenue, east of downtown.
“That was the sketchiest part,” said Bradley, 35, who lives a few blocks from Railroad. “I’m super pumped they got this finished.”
Such excitement is the expected reaction to the completion of multi-use trails. But this project, which includes the Depot Railroad Avenue Park and a cycling/pedestrian bridge over King Creek, has also become the focus of a contentious debate over the pace of the city’s past and future progress on the Estatoe.
Mayor Pro Tem Mac Morrow said residents should applaud the completion of such an ambitious job during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This is the most challenging year in our history and we came through it in a marvelous way,” he said. “Projects that get envisioned and completed should be something to celebrate.”
Council Member Geraldine Dinkins and trail advocate Aaron Baker are celebrating, they say. But they also rue the delays in the opening of the trail and see the project as a sign of the city’s distraction from what should be its primary recreational goal — building a bike path worthy of a city that touts itself as a cycling mecca.
When the council approved the project at a meeting in September of 2018, the depot was budgeted at $530,000 and City Manager Jim Fatland estimated the cost of the path, parking lot and bridge at “about $260,000."
The depot came in slightly over budget, at $534,000, $154,000 of which was raised through community donations, while the expense of the other features rose to $492,000 — for a total project cost of more than $1 million.
The depot is of questionable historic value and provides a trail hub that could be more logically located elsewhere, Dinkins said. And Baker asked “how many miles of bike trail could you fund with that money?”
“We’re supposed to be the biking capital of the South,” he said, “and if our own kids can’t ride their bikes to school, that’s pretty embarrassing.”
The first section of the Estatoe was completed in 2003, and the stretch leading to the new one at Depot Park was finished 13 years ago. But the clearest indication of the sluggish progress on trail construction, said Baker and Dinkins, is the year that passed between the opening of the depot and the final paving of the bike path.
“That seems to be entirely too long for a trail of that length,” Dinkins said.
The Advocates
Morrow answered this criticism by producing stacks of papers that he spread over a conference table at Keir Manufacturing, where he works as general manager.
One of these documents was a 2016 Brevard/Transylvania County long-range recreation plan that identified the need for additional trails, parks and meeting space — all of which are satisfied by the project.
“We’re following a plan here,” said Morrow, chair of the council’s Parks, Trails and Recreation Committee.
Though he acknowledged the depot is not an exact replica of the city’s since-demolished train station, he called it “an obvious choice to honor that transitional time when the railroad came in in the 1890s and brought in the outside world.” This history will be highlighted by a timeline and photos to be be installed in the depot’s meeting room in the coming weeks.
The completion of the new section of the trail stagnated for years because some of the right-of-way was owned by an unwilling seller, Citizens Telephone Co., now Comporium Communications, which finally agreed to part with the property in 2017. And besides Covid, trail construction faced unexpected obstacles, including power line relocations and the need to permit and build a culvert under the trail.
The city plans to move forward more quickly from this point on, Fatland wrote in an email.
He has recommended devoting $700,000 — $240,000 of it from a Pisgah Health Foundation grant — in the next fiscal year’s budget to extend the trail from King Creek to the planned Mary C. Jenkins Community Center on Cashiers Valley Road.
The city has also received a $180,000 state grant to buy right-of-way, and it saved more than $400,000 on its share of the cost of building a multi-purpose bridge over King Creek. Fatland, Morrow said, convinced the state to build a narrower span partly by pledging to construct the separate cycling/pedestrian bridge, which cost $118,000.
Design is nearly complete for the next stretch of trail, which will end at W. Main Street. It should be complete by Thanksgiving, providing a crucial link, by way of Probart Street, to trails at the Bracken Preserve, Morrow said.
It is misleading, he added, to focus on the 13 years that have passed between the completion of the new section of trail and the adjacent stretch that ends at McLean.
During that time, the city has built several other trail segments, including connections to Davidson River Campground in Pisgah National Forest and the Oskar Blues Brewery, as well as a stretch along Gallimore Road that will connect Brevard Elementary to a future section of the Estatoe near Brevard High School.
The city is also working on other recreation projects that will be linked to the trail, including the Tannery Skate Park, Silversteen Playground and the dog park near Ecusta Road.
“We’ve been moving and grooving,” he said.
The Critics
They would have moved a lot faster, critics said, without the time and money spent on the depot.
It is made of modern materials and is neither in the same location nor of the same design as the old depot, built in 1914, Dinkins said. The city has adequate meeting space elsewhere, she has previously argued, and thinks a more natural site for the parking and restrooms at the depot park is Jenkins Community Center.
As it stands now, she said, the depot “seems like too much hub for not enough bike path.”
Baker has pointed to a resolution the council passed in August of 2018, when it pledged to complete the planned bike path in three years, which he interpreted as a connection all the way to Brevard High.
He understands the difficulty of securing easements, he said, but the city could be working on stretches of trail on land it already owns, such as the link between the Skate Park and Rosman Highway.
He is supportive of the schedule for the extension to Mary C. Jenkins but, given previous delays, is skeptical that it will be met.
“The question is, is that really going to happen?”
Users Approve
But these critics and proponents agree on several larger points about the trail, nearly all of them as matter of fact.
They see the Estatoe as hugely beneficial for community health and economic development. They tout the access it creates for transportation-disadvantaged residents to shopping, jobs and health care. They look forward to the link it can provide to larger trail networks in Pisgah National Forest and the Bracken Preserve, and to the Ecusta Trail planned between Brevard and Hendersonville.
Visit the depot parking lot and you’ll find more fans.
On a recent afternoon, Michael Hartz, 59, a retired environmental engineer, had just racked his tandem after a ride on the trail with his wife, Liz Lewis. Residents of Straus Park, they frequently use the trail to commute to the farmer’s market in Brevard and appreciate every stretch of the ride “where we don’t have to contend with 18-wheelers,” he said.
They saw walkers, several cyclists and a skateboarder already using the new section of trail. They take vacations to similar paths all over the county and see how they become magnets for locals and visitors, and how nearby communities boom.
“It’s just amazing what happens what happens around bike paths,” Hartz said.
