by Mary Loden
Last Wednesday’s social media post by Cerro Gordo County Engineer Brandon Billings gave Clear Lake bike riders and South Shore Drive business owners the welcome news they had been waiting for – County Road B-35 on the south side of Clear Lake is now open.
The construction of the multi-use trail adjoining the north edge of the road, also known as 235th St., between Balsam and Dogwood Avenues has been ongoing, nearly eight weeks, since May 10.
“There are still a couple of outstanding items, such as the bike tool station and some posts the contractor will install, but that work can happen while the road and trail are open,” Billings posted.
The new trail connects the Sisters Prairie Trail to Dogwood Ave. with an oversize shoulder on the north side of the road. Contracted by Heartland Asphalt Inc. the project involved building up the ditch on the north side to allow for a wider marked bike lane. Rumble strips were included as a safety precaution.
Prior to this project, bikers wanting access to the Sisters Prairie Trail had to ride down B-35. “We’ve tried for years to figure out a way to pay for a bike trail,” Billings said. The answer came last summer when Cerro Gordo County Supervisors collaborated with the city of Mason City to apply for a $11.8 million ‘Bike North Iowa’ grant from Iowa’s Destination Iowa grant program.
The program was created to assist with funding for new expanded tourism and quality of life opportunities throughout Iowa. The fund provides 40 percent of the total cost of a project.
“Our projects total about $1.5 million of the $11.8 million submitted by [Mason City,]” Tom Meyer, Chief Administrative Officer at the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse, said in an earlier interview. “We’ll be a co-applicant on the grant.” Meyer explained the county would be responsible for 60 percent of the cost of their three projects and Mason City would be responsible for 60 percent of the remaining projects. In the co-application Mason City Administrator Aaron Burnett combined the county and city and listed the combined project’s funds as coming from $6.2 million from public funding, $20,000 from private fundraising, $850,608 from the federal American Rescue Plan funds, as well as the anticipated $4.7 Destination Iowa grant.
The county’s projects included creating trail connections to safely tie rural communities to Clear Lake, Mason City, the Trolley Trail and Sisters Prairie Trail without having bikers leave off-street bike trails. The plan also included updating a county campground near Thornton
At the Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors meeting on June 26 Billings gave a project update saying the paving portion of the project was complete and his crews were continuing to put in rumble strips between the bike lane and the road traffic, as well as repaint the road.
He told the supervisors he couldn’t give a specific date for the opening of the road because Heartland Asphalt still needed to come in and apply a bog seal, a treatment applied to rumble strips to slow down deterioration.
Heartland was able to rearrange their schedule, finish their work and get the road open before the Fourth of July.
