‘Milestone Moment’ for Emerald Trail

The City of Jacksonville, Groundwork Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) are celebrating a “major victory” in their commitment to delivering the Emerald Trail to the Jacksonville community.

During a press conference on Tuesday, March 19 at the Phoenix Arts and Innovation District in Springfield, representatives from the three entities – Mayor Donna Deegan, City Council President Ron Salem, Groundwork Jacksonville CEO Kay Ehas and JTA CEO Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr. – shared details on this transformational $147 million grant, the largest one-time federal grant the city has ever received.

Additional speakers at the press conference included District Director Bryan Campbell with the Office of Florida Representative Aaron Bean and Tony Cho with the Phoenix Arts and Innovation District, which will be situated along the Emerald Trail’s link in Springfield.

City Councilmembers Matt Carlucci, Jimmy Peluso and Ju’Coby Pittman attended the press conference as well.

Ford said of the nearly 700 applicants, a total of 132 recipients were selected, and Jacksonville received the sixth-highest allotment from the pot of $3.1 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation Neighborhood Access and Equity grant program.

This grant, combined with a 20% match totaling $36.65 million from the Local Option Gas Tax, will fund the design and construction for the remaining five links of the Emerald Trail: Segment 3 (southwest connector between Riverside and McCoy’s Creek); Segment 4 (the S-line connector); Segment 6 (on the westside connecting North Riverside, Woodstock and Robinson’s Addition); Segment 7 (on the northwest, linking Durkeeville, College Gardens and Newtown); and Segment 8 (linking Eastside, Phoenix and Springfield).

“These remaining five segments will be significantly accelerated because the funding on the local option gas tax was over a 30-year period,” Ford said. “Now we have all of the funding that would have been slated over that timeframe on a much earlier passage of time and we’re able to move forward.”

The LaVilla link is the first segment of the 30-mile trail system set to open, tentatively scheduled for early May. Ehas explained that 40% of the trail is either “complete, under construction or in design.” In addtition to the LaVilla link completion, construction on Hogan Street is slated for later this year and Hogan’s Creek, currently in design, should begin to see construction by 2026.

During her remarks at the press conference, Deegan called this grant a “milestone moment” for the city.

“That record-setting amount for the Emerald Trail is a testament to the power of collaboration, to the power of Team Jacksonville,” she said, adding that the Emerald Trail touches on “some of the top priorities” of her administration: health, economic development and infrastructure.

“Infrastructure isn’t just roads and bridges or how we get around,” she said. “It’s also about connecting people and communities. It’s one of the biggest goals of this grant: reconnecting neighborhoods that were cut off by infrastructure and transportation decisions implemented decades ago.”

Following the press conference, Ehas shared comments on the additional funding still needed to carry the project through to completion. The only remaining portion of the project that still needs funding, she explained, is the Hogan’s Creek construction, which will “be a combination, too, of local and federal dollars.”

“There’s a FEMA BRIC Grant; it pays for 75% of the project, so that’s the grant we’ll be going after for Hogan’s Creek,” she said.

FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program has an allocated $1 billion in funding; it “support[s] communities through capability and capacity building; encouraging and enabling innovation; promoting partnerships; enabling large infrastructure projects; maintaining flexibility; and providing consistency.”

Looking to future plans for Groundwork Jacksonville, Ehas said the organization will be establishing “a long-term agreement with the City” regarding the trail once it’s fully completed.

“We’re going to help with maintenance, we’re probably going to be doing programming and activation,” she said.

Last October, the City of Jacksonville, Groundwork Jacksonville and the JTA executed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the trail’s remaining five segments.

Construction crews broke ground on the Emerald Trail in 2021. Once completed, it will connect 21 parks, 16 schools, 14 urban neighborhoods, three hospitals, two colleges and the JTA Regional Transportation Center.

By Michele Leivas
Resident Community News