A special public meeting was held February 5, 2015 at the Tofte Town Hall to discuss plans to improve the Tofte Town Park and Gitchi-Gami State Trail (GGST) routing and wayside design projects that have been in the works for some time. About a dozen people attended.
Justin Otsea, a project manager from the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission (ARDC), Andy Hubley, director of the regional planning division of the ARDC and landscape architect CJ Fernandez, of Fernandez Landscape Architecture, led the discussion.
As for the Gitchi-Gami State Trail, Fernandez said this meeting was a chance to discuss opportunities and ideas for improvements along the Highway 61 corridor through Tofte. The group looked at safety issues, connectedness, parking, access, pedestrian access and use, bikes, vehicular activity, environment, amenity improvements and public enhancements.
The GGST is a non-motorized, paved recreational trail between Two Harbors and Grand Marais, built near the shore of Lake Superior. To date, over 29 miles of trail are complete in several segments, the longest of which is the 14.6-mile segment between Gooseberry Falls State Park and the town of Beaver Bay.
Because this was a first meeting Fernandez said it was important to form a steering committee and develop ideas for work plans. “But if we show up with options that we can’t agree on, we need to start over. The goal is to have solutions that we can agree on with the public.”
He also said committees wouldn’t be delivering a construction document, just a concept for either the park or trail.
Making up the steering committee will be Maren Webb of Moving Matters, Mark Rudningen of MN DNR, Barb Gervais, John Nelson, Gary Hansen, Dave Monson, Ron Ankeny, John Wytanis and Dennis Rysdahl.
The Gitchi-Gami Trail has a 1.1- mile gap extending through the town of Tofte. Just where to route the trail was the main topic of discussion. Dennis Rysdahl, owner and general manager of Bluefin Bay Family Resorts in Tofte, said about 70 percent of the bicyclists who use the Gitchi-Gami Trail are guests at his business. He suggested routing the trail down by the lake on Bluefin’s walkway as it comes off of Bayview Drive. He said he had met with association owners and discussed this proposal with them and they sounded interested in it.
However, the walkway is only five feet wide and planked with wood and in places would need to have rails installed for bicyclists if rebuilt. Hubley said the trail would have to be 10 feet wide to meet government standards and would probably have to be paved, but he wasn’t sure about that.
Hubley said a major concern was money. With a construction start date of 2018, Hubley said the feds have promised $600,000 while the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will kick in $150,000. That doesn’t leave much money for grading and sloping of the GGST, let alone building a bridge or a tunnel—as John Nelson suggested—under or over Highway 61 for the bikers and hikers using the Gitchi-Gami Trail. Hubley said adding amenities like tunnels or bridges pushes the cost of design and build-out for bike paths to as much a $1.2 million per mile.
Discussion then centered around keeping the path close to Highway 61 on either side of the road, and even looking at using the power line above Highway 61 away from the lake as part of the route. Just where bicyclists will cross the road is also up for debate, and as far as building a bicycle trail along a power line, Rysdahl said he had seen bike trails built along power lines and he didn’t like them.
All of the possible trail routes are still on the table, and Fernadez said he would get back to the group at the next meeting with a map showing the different routes they had discussed at this meeting.
Improvements considered for town park
When it came to the Tofte Town Park there was a lot of talk about improving the current picnic shelter. As Rysdahl said, it doesn’t have to be bigger, just nicer, and have “less exposure to the weather.” There was also a discussion about possibly putting a deck onto the picnic shelter and installing large windows that could be opened on nice days, making it essentially an indoor/outdoor facility.
Fernandez said a survey needs to be done of who uses the park, as well as looking at making the harbor more accessible to fishermen, boaters, and kayakers. Several people talked about looking at picnic shelters and fire places/pits built at Gooseberry Park and other public sites down the shore and using those concepts and designs as a guide. If the park is improved, more parking will have to be added because more people will use it, said one attendee.
Barb Gervais, Tofte town clerk, said the township had to look at maintenance costs, especially when it came to installing toilets. “We don’t have any sewer or water in the park. Vault toilets might be the most practical to put there. We can have them pumped as needed,” she said.
To comply with federal standards the park must be outfitted with toilets approved by the American with Disabilities Act. Vault toilets can be purchased or designed and built that would meet those criteria.
Where would the money come from to improve the park?
Otsea said, “We believe the park’s improvements would be a strong candidate for multiple state and federal funding programs. The idea is to finish the design project and put the town in position to be able to leverage those funds with a well-planned, publicly informed improvement plan for the park.”
The next meeting will be held in late April, said Fernandez. As the work progresses, open houses will be held to show the public the plans, get new ideas, discuss options and explain the steps needed to get the projects off of the ground.
Potential for a new wayside
Also discussed was the proposed Marshall Wayside rest, which is on land owned by the Minnesota DNR on the east side of Tofte. The DNR owns property all of the way to Lake Superior.
The wayside rest is part of the North Shore Scenic Drive initiative, said Hubley. Besides parking for bikes and cars, there is a proposed trail to hike down to the lake from the wayside rest.
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