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City eyes South Main trailhead for Ecusta Trail

Although the current plans for the Ecusta Trail show a trailhead on Kanuga Road at Busy Bend, the city of Hendersonville wants engineers to look at a way of creating a trailhead on South Main Street as part of the big road plan that will redesign the convergence of King, Main and Church streets.

 

Although City Manager John Connet pulled the item from the council's agenda on Thursday night, he said the city still plans to pursue a request to incoporate the eastern terminus of the trail into the South Main project.

He recommended the council delay action on the plan after the NCDOT announced plans to delay hundreds of projects across the state. The South Main roundabout and replacement of the bridge over Mud Creek would be delayed from 2023 to 2026. Connet had asked the council to authorize a contract amendment for consulting engineers Kimley-Horn to study the Ecusta Trail connection at a cost of $15,000.

In the additional work on the roundabout, engineers would design a new south gateway to downtown, connecting to the future Ecusta Trail, incorporating a trailhead and identifying space for parking.

"We’ll come back and work with DOT," Connet said. "We believe there's going to be an opportunity to get Ecusta all the way to Main Street. This one piece is really focused on how the Ecusta Trail will interface with that South Main Street roundabout and get folks ultimately to Main Street. Since DOT’s delaying tne project, we’re going to delay approving this just for a little while."