Unhappy trails

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In 2002, Mount Holly citizens began meeting to work on ways to revitalize their downtown district.

Lee Beatty, a family physician and a community leader, said people were wondering how to connect the town to the Catawba River, which is less than four-tenths of a mile from downtown Mount Holly.

“There’s hardly any town that has almost 10 miles of riverfront,” Beatty said.

Mount Holly is a city in Gaston County, across the river from west Charlotte and one of the closest communities to the river, he said.

Some of the city’s residents want to capitalize on that.

But they have run into a major obstacle: red tape created by Charlotte’s Duke Energy Corp., which owns property that falls in the path of a proposed greenway.

Duke, though, has given the city, community organizers and their greenway planner a to-do list to clear that hurdle and has agreed to meet with the project’s planner to plot the greenway’s course.

“I think everybody has the best interests of the project at heart,” Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said. “It’s just complicated. There are a number of complex issues that have to be addressed.”

Residents have formed the Mount Holly Community Development Foundation, a nonprofit, and contacted the Catawba Lands Conservancy about their Carolina Thread Trail initiative, which was created by the Foundation of the Carolinas with the goal of connecting 15 counties in North and South Carolina with 1,000 miles of trails as a sort of “green interstate system.”

The organizers also enlisted the help of greenway planner Chuck Flink, a North Carolina-based designer with Alta/Greenways, who has designed similar trails throughout the country and internationally.

Flink said the now 9-year-old project has been going “very slow.”

“The complication is that we’re trying to obtain the right of access across some private property,” he said.

That property belongs to Duke.

Sheehan said the company is concerned about permitting access through its property because parts of it are wetlands and because the trail would wind through some company-owned infrastructure, including power lines. She also said some environmental impact studies have to be conducted.

The company has been working with the community, the city and Flink, she said, adding that Duke has sent them “a set of very specific steps that need to take place in order for us all to proceed.”

Sheehan would not disclose to The Mecklenburg Times what those steps are, citing the multifarious nature of some of the items on the list.

Flink said greenway organizers have to gain a legal right of entry from Duke to get on the property and flag a route for the trail. After that, the trail has to be surveyed and then organizers have to design a bridge across a small inlet and get it permitted by the state of North Carolina, he said. In other words, even after Duke grants permission to access its property, the project still has a long road to travel before construction can begin.

After four years of talks with Duke, Flink said he feels like the company has slowed the process.

Still, he said, “I do feel that Duke is on board. I wish things could have been done a little faster … but now they are working with us and do want to see the correct solution for the project.”

Flink was scheduled to meet with company representatives Monday to “stake a new route” on the company’s property.

“We have had hurdles to overcome with Duke in terms of them feeling comfortable with a route across their property, (but) we are making progress,” he said.

Flink said it takes a long time to get greenways built anywhere in North Carolina. If it isn’t property owner issues, it’s permitting issues, and those snags could add years to the process of building a greenway.

Beatty said the community is ready to “stop talking about it and start walking on it.

“Once we get the go-ahead from Duke Energy, we can have construction documents in place within a few months and we can put it out for a bid.”

Greenways are often built in waterway buffers and nature preserves, frequently connecting parklands. In Mount Holly, the trail will connect the downtown district to the river and Tuckaseege Park — the area’s largest — which already has a 1-mile segment of the trail that’s ready to be connected to from the north by Mount Holly’s greenway and from the south by Belmont Abby’s greenway.

Mount Holly residents are supportive of the greenway, voting in a city referendum to approve $5 million in additional funding in June 2003.