Centerfield mayor goes to bat for town’s inclusion in trail project

“I was a little bothered, to be honest…We are the step child at times.”

Centerfield Mayor Travis Leatherwood on Centerfield not being included in the initially proposed US-89 bike trail.

CENTERFIELD—The concept for a bike trail along U.S. 89 through Sanpete County that would have had one end terminating in Gunnison has now been extended to include Centerfield after Mayor Travis Leatherwood complained to project engineers about his city being overlooked.

The revised plan, now including Centerfield, was explained to the Centerfield City Council by Jones and Demille representative and bike-trial project manager Micklane Farmer at a meeting on Wednesday, April 2.

“We have updated this to include Centerfield,” Farmer said, before showing the council the new proposed trail.

“We’ve met with some of you to talk about the trail and where you would like it to go,” Farmer said. “We’re going around now to councils presenting their preferred alignment through the whole corridor from Centerfield to Fairview.”

The trail’s southern end would begin at about 100 South in Centerfield and run north along 400 East, which eventually turns into Gunnison’s 200 East, and from there to a point where it would cross to the north side of the highway after the highway turns to the east toward Sterling.

The plan originally had the southern end of the trail ending at 600 South in Gunnison. That disgruntled Mayor Leatherwood somewhat, leading him to express his disappointment to Farmer.

“I was a little bothered, to be honest,” Leatherwood said, who admitted that he may have even come across as “rude.”

Farmer explained that during the course of writing grants to get funding to perform a feasibility study for the project, “you guys got lumped with Gunnison. Whoever wrote [the grant] felt like you were one city, I guess.”

“That happens,” Leatherwood replied, but then also expressing some chagrin at a certain perception that has Centerfield consistently playing second-fiddle to Gunnison. “We are the stepchild at times,” he said.

After Leatherwood’s complaint Farmer went back to the federal funders of the study and got approval to roll Centerfield into it, “which makes sense,” he said.

“We’re talking like hundreds of millions of dollars when it comes to building all of this.”

Micklane Farmer of Jones & Demille Engineering, bike trail project manager.

While the study doesn’t include anything south of Centerfield, Farmer said the ultimate goal would be for the Sanpete trial to be merged into the Utah Trail Network Program, an initiative of the Utah Department of Transportation to build a system of non-motorized trials to “connect Utahns of all ages and abilities to their destinations and communities,” according to the network’s website.

“So when we’re done with this, the hope is that they take this and implement it into the Utah Trail Network, and then the hope is we can connect to Salina and then Salina to Aurora, and Aurora to Richfield,” Farmer said.

Leatherwood replied, “That’s awesome. Thank you so much for going to bat for us and getting Centerfield as part of that.”

Farmer emphasized that the project right now is still in the feasibility-study phase, and that important questions remain to be answered if the project is to become a reality. For instance, how will it be funded? Who would be responsible for securing that funding? And who would be ultimately responsible for maintaining the trail if and when it is built?

“That’s still up in the air,” Farmer said. “It depends on who builds it.”

The project could end up being one of the most significant projects ever in Sanpete County.

“We’re talking like hundreds of millions of dollars when it comes to building all of this,” Farmer said.

A meeting to gather public input on the plan will be held on April 23 at 5:30 p.m. at Gunnison City Hall. (Other such meetings will be held in Ephraim on April 10 and Mt. Pleasant on April 29).

Farmer told council members they were the first in the county to get a glimpse of a website Jones and Demille had set up to provide information about the Sanpete County Trail plan, including an interactive map, and to receive comment and feedback about the same.

“You guys are actually the first ones to see the actual interactive map tonight because we just got it ready,” Farmer said.

Leatherwood indicated that perhaps all was forgiven.

“Awesome,” he said. “Today now we do feel special.”

The website’s address is http://www.TheSanpeteTrail.com.