Village of Oakwood supports trail with landscaping, road improvements 

When the Village of Oakwood, Ohio, set out to create a fitness trail, village leaders were determined to make the most of the project.

They've complemented the 1 3/4-mile trail by widening Forbes Road by six feet, installing new curbs and gutters and landscaping intersections. The entire project cost about $1.8 million, and will make the area safer for motorists and pedestrians alike, Oak wood Mayor Gary Gottschalk assures.

One of the 10-foot-wide trail's highlights is a 280-foot long pedestrian-only bridge with a spectacular view of the nature preserve. "We're really proud of that," Gottschalk said.

The $100,000 landscaping portion, marking most intersections, was designed for impact. In addition to decorative brick walls and evergreens, flowerbeds include eight different varieties of shrub-roses providing all summer colors and fragrances as well as daffodils in the spring and Russian sage in the fall. Some of the trees around the beds are red maples, silver lindens, sweetbay magnolias and aristocrat pears.

Construction started last spring with some related fill along Fair Oaks Road. In addition to new concrete curbs and gutters, some hills along Forbes Road were lowered to make driving safer. Although most of the work was completed in December, crews still need to finish some wood rail fencing and striping along the trail.

QCI provided contract administration and inspection services. Mark Schneider, the QCI contract administrator, said the trickiest part involved keeping heavy equipment on the roadway to protect the wetlands as workers built up the trail's bridge foundations.

"It was also difficult to work with many of the existing utilities because of the way they were located, especially because some of the old records weren't available," says Ed Hren, the village's engineer and a principle of Chagrin Valley Engineering in Bedford Heights. "In the end, we managed to avoid any problems," he said.

Hren says he was encouraged by the cooperation of several governmental agencies that provided funding for the project, including federal, state, and county agencies, the Village of Oakwood and the City of Bedford Heights. "This is a classic example of many agencies coming together to fund a public safety project and making it work".