Improvements are coming to the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail in downtown Akron.
The upgrades will include signs to help people navigate the trail, improved connections to city attractions, bicycle lanes on Main Street, more colorful and inviting trail underpasses and the addition of welcoming arches over the trail.
The work will be funded by a $510,200 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. That is in addition to a 2015 grant of $249,000 from the foundation to begin the trail-enhancement initiative.
The recipient of both grants is the Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition, an Akron-based grass-roots group.
The new grant, announced on Wednesday, is “extremely exciting,” said Dan Rice, president and chief executive officer of the coalition.
The goal is to continue to enhance and improve the Towpath Trail and make it more accessible through what’s called the iTowpath project, he said.
His group is working toward “a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly downtown” along the Towpath Trail, he said.
Rice’s group is working closely with the city of Akron and with the Downtown Akron Partnership.
The groups are planning new arches to greet trail users entering downtown at Quaker and Ash streets after crossing the Akron Innerbelt on a trail bridge.
Other archways are also planned at Water and Bowery streets, Rice said.
Murals and landscaping are planned for a number of Akron underpasses along the trail that are now rather bare, stark and unwelcoming, Rice said.
The effort will begin with an underpass at Russell Avenue north of Summit Lake where a young professional’s group will assist, he said.
Plans also call for connecting the Towpath Trail to the Akron Art Museum, the Northside district and the University of Akron, Rice said.
“The iTowpath project has the potential to not only create a vital central corridor for community life and recreational activities in Akron, but also to change the shape of the region’s future development,” said Kyle Kutuchief, Knight Foundation program director for Akron. “The enhanced trail will encourage people to connect with each other and the city, creating deeper attachments and incentives for talented people to live and stay in Akron.”
In 2015, Rice’s group undertook the six initial iTowpath projects. The first projects included publishing and distributing 1,500 copies of a trail map-plan, building bicycle service stations along the trail, adding outdoor music and a colt sculpture at the Richard Howe House on West Exchange Street and designating a street-sidewalk connector from the Towpath Trail at Bartges Avenue to the Akron Zoo with animal prints leading the way.
The Towpath Trail, when completed, will stretch 101 miles from Cleveland through Akron to New Philadelphia. It attracts about 2.5 million people per year.
For more information, go to www.ohioeriecanal.org.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.