Barkley Village residents may soon have a new walking and biking trail in their neighborhood.
The walking path will serve as a “north-south connection” between Sunset Drive and the Squalicum Creek corridor, according to Bellingham’s city councilmember Edwin “Skip” Williams.
The trail, designed to connect the King Mountain and Irongate neighborhoods with the Barkley Village area, will cost an estimated $2 million, and is a “high priority” for the council, Williams said during a March 28 city council meeting.
“The project will also include completing a trail around Sunset Pond, which I’ve tried to walk through many times to no success,” Williams told the city’s Parks and Recreation Committee during a meeting the same day.
Councilmembers voted unanimously, with one member excused, to submit grant applications to the state Recreation and Conservation Office to pay for the trail.
This new stretch of trail will exist on the Bay to Baker trail system, a proposed 74-mile hiking, biking and horse trail across Whatcom County. Currently, only two sections of the trail are developed: the Maple Falls to Glacier Trail in Maple Creek Park and the Squalicum Creek Trail in Bellingham.
“This is a long-sought-after connector,” Parks director Nicole Oliver said during the Parks and Recreation Committee meeting on March 28. “It’ll be a really important commuter route and it will also serve neighbors to the north.”
Oliver said there are several options for designing and developing the trail, but it will include a bridge over the creek crossing and may include some boardwalks through wetland areas.
The high project cost, Williams said, is due to the floodplain and the Squalicum Creek crossing.
Any bridges and walkways need to be high enough for FEMA floodplains as well as storm flows, Oliver said.
“This corridor is accommodating a heck of a lot of water during flood events,” she said. “The bridges that we’ve built in here are very substantial, which is why the cost is so high.”
The city hopes to begin working on the project soon, with construction slated for 2023 and 2024, though the timeline hinges upon the availability of state funds.
Though the city has been “successful at getting grants in this corridor several times now,” there are contingency payment plans in the event these grants don’t work out, Oliver said.
If the city fails to secure grant funding from the state for the project, the trail will still be built but will be constructed in phases, with the cost spread over several budget cycles.
“We’re really excited about this project,” Oliver said. “It’s been on our list for a long time and we think it’s going to compete well.”
