A New, Unlikely Ecusta Trail Challenge: Figuring Out How to Spend $46 Million in Federal Grants
The total of two recently received grants exceeds the estimated $43.5-million funding gap for trail construction. Officials will discuss how any excess funds can be spent.
BREVARD — The city of Brevard now faces a problem that would have been hard to imagine even a few weeks ago.
How is it going to spend all its federal money?
On Friday, for the second time in a little over two weeks, the city learned it had been awarded a federal grant of more than $20 million for the construction of the 19-mile, multi-use Ecusta Trail linking Brevard and Hendersonville.
The most recent grant, $21.4 million, comes from the Nationally Significant Federal Lands and Tribal Projects (NSFLTP) Program, which pays for connections to land owned by American Indians or the federal government — in Ecusta’s case, Pisgah National Forest.
On June 22 the office of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis informed the city, which serves as the lead government body for construction of the trail in Transylvania County, that it had received a $24.5-million federal RAISE grant.
Though word has already seeped out by that point that the city would likely be awarded both grants, its leaders believed it would only be able to access one pool of funding.
But last week, Brevard Mayor Maureen Copelof was informed the city would receive both grants.
The receipt of just one was touted as filling the funding gaps needed to complete the construction of the trail — and as such was considered cause for celebration. Learning it could use both was the source of even more excitement.
And no, Copelof replied when asked, this does not amount to an embarrassment of riches.
“Not at all . . . It’s an overflowing bucket of happiness of riches,” she said.
Henderson had already secured funding for six miles of the trail, from Hendersonville to the French Broad River, work that is expected to begin this fall.
Some of the nearly $46 million total of both grants would help build the remaining five miles of trail in Henderson, for which the county had previously received a grant of $10.5 million.
The cost of building the remaining 13 miles, including that five miles in Henderson and eight in Transylvania, is $43.4 million, according to the RAISE application.
But the price is likely to climb, bringing greater demand on the available pool of federal dollars, said Mark Tooley, president of Friends of the Ecusta Trail.
“There has been, as everybody knows, an escalation in construction costs and maybe some of the (additional funds) will cover the cost of that escalation,” he said.
Beyond that, it’s too early to know how the money can or will be used, and this will be the subject of planned discussions between representatives of the city, Henderson, and both the state and federal Departments of Transportation.
“We’ll have to go through a process to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. DOT on each of these grants,” said Ryan Brumfield, the director of integrated mobility for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, which is the administrator of both grants.
“The terms of that agreement will spell out the scope, schedule and budget of the project,” he said, and “we haven’t started any of that yet.”
One possibility involves locally generated funds. Those helped secure both federal grants, but neither program requires a fixed percentage match provided locally.
Those local dollars, including donations secured by Friends and Conserving Carolina, amount to about $8.4 million in both counties, according to the RAISE grant application.
Previously imagined as helping to pay for trail construction, they could now, possibly, be used for related projects the grants don’t cover, Tooley and Copelof said, including restrooms and trailheads.
“The people will expect to have benches and kiosks and parking and those sorts of things, which will have to come from sources other than the grant funds,” Tooley said.
“I really think it will allow us to build a much more comprehensive trail with all the components that we needed,” Copelof said. “We would have been scrambling to continue to raise money to do all those things.”
Considering that the NSFLTP grant was awarded for a link to Pisgah — and that the city’s underfunded and often-delayed Estatoe Trail will actually provide the connection between the Forest and the Estatoe — could some of the money from that grant go to the Estatoe?
“It’s possible,” Brumfield, though he reiterated that it is too early to make that determination.
One source of the local match was the Transylvania County Tourist Development Authority, which has pledged $1 million to be paid over the next several years to match any grant “related to construction of the Ecusta.”
Executive Director Clark Lovelace said he couldn’t speak for the board members, but he also said that directing some of those funds to the Estatoe might be possible.
“I am hopeful they can use some of these dollars for the Brevard area trail system that connects to the Ecusta because I believe that is an important element in all of this,” he said.
The Board has consistently supported trail projects, he added, and “it has also shown itself to be pretty flexible and nimble about how it supports thing.”
Given the amount of grant money available, has anyone at TDA said that maybe the project no longer needs the authority’s dollars?
“It’s just my opinion, but unofficially I would say not at all,” Lovelace said. “I think there is nothing but excitement that another step has been taken between here and the trail being developed and coming to fruition.”
Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com
How about put in a trolly of some sort with the extra money? It might even serve a practical purpose for people to travel back and forth to hendersonville?
This is such great news. I've seen these large-scale trails have a very positive impact for everyone, young and old, in communities in Missouri, and am so glad this will be coming to our area.