It's also an economic development engine in its own right
Of all the regulars who ply the Tammany Trace through lower St. Tammany Parish, Jim Monahan no doubt cuts one of the most interesting figures. Chalk it up to being 6 foot 7. Oh, and riding a three-wheel trike. "Like a chopper," Monahan describes his trike with a chuckle. "Only not as fast."
While he jokes about his three-wheeler, Monahan, 74, of the Covington area, becomes dead serious when he talks about the Tammany Trace, which he rides several days each week. "That," he says, "is my lifeline."
As the Tammany Trace enters its 20th year, its status as a local and regional icon is unquestioned. The Trace, supporters say, has matured into one of the south's best known recreation trails and an economic development engine in its own right.
Each day walkers, runners, bikers and skaters from across the region hit the asphalt of the 28-plus mile pathway that links Slidell and Covington, passing along the way through Lacombe, Mandeville and Abita Springs.
They're folks like Monahan, who has 29,300 miles on his trike and rides the Trace as much for fun as for his health. "Twenty, 22, 30, 40," he ticked off the mileage he pedals each afternoon, depending on his route. "I average around 12 mph. There's a lot of things I can't do because of my health -- but I try to ride as much as I can."
And people like Rachel Booth of the Mandeville area, whose feather-light footfalls burned up the Trace last year as she trained for January's U.S. Olympic marathon trials in Houston.
"I call it my second home," said Booth, who at her peak was running more than half her 70 miles each week on sections of the Trace. "I spend a lot of time there."
First Rails-to-Trails project
The Tammany Trace is Louisiana's first Rails-To-Trails project, a national program that repurposes unwanted rail lines into recreational and alternative transportation pathways. The Rails-To-Trails Conservancy counts 1,710 trails nationwide with more than 20,000 miles. One of three such trails in Louisiana, the Tammany Trace holds a spot in the conservancy's top 100 list. The rating is largely based on user reviews.
Cutting across much of southern St. Tammany, the Trace winds past a handful of neighborhoods, through Fontainebleau State Park, and skirts the unspoiled Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. Wildlife sightings are common: turtles, snakes, rabbits, birds, deer -- even the occasional bald eagle.
It hasn't come cheap. Millions of dollars have been poured into the Trace during the past two decades. This year's parish budget pegs Trace spending at $1.25 million, with funding coming from numerous sources, including grants, donations, parish government and cell tower revenues.
But supports say it's money well spent. Nearly 230,000 people used the Trace in 2011, based on numbers kept by rangers. Another 110,596 visited the Kids Konnection playground at the Trace headquarters on Koop Drive north of Mandeville. Not surprisingly, habitual users are overwhelmingly from St. Tammany Parish. But ZIP codes collected by the rangers show visitors from across the metro region and southeastern U.S., as well as a handful of foreign countries.
"The Trace really brings people from far and wide to St. Tammany Parish," said Donna O'Daniels, president and CEO of the St. Tammany Parish Tourist and Convention Commission.
No clear vision, at first
Kevin Davis says today there wasn't a clear vision, at least in the beginning, as to exactly what the Trace would be. Davis, then a member of the St. Tammany Parish Police Jury representing the Slidell area, said he mostly wanted to find a public use for the rail line about to be abandoned by Illinois Central Railroad. The 200-foot-wide line encompassing 758 acres was owned by Richard Blossman, who could do what he wanted with it once the railroad stopped using it.
"I thought maybe we (the parish) could run some sort of train on it, as silly as that sounds," Davis said. "Really, I was just looking for any way to keep it open and get funding for it."
Davis, who later became St. Tammany Parish president and now heads the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, helped broker a deal in December 1992 in which the parish was able to use federal money to buy the land for $1.4 million, essentially marking the formal birth of what would later become the Tammany Trace.
Not surprisingly, there was initial skepticism and opposition. "Everybody said it would attract criminals, drug dealers, that women would be raped and all that," said Steve Sperier, who owns the Spokesman Pro Bike Works in Mandeville. "It's been just the opposite -- it is one of the gems of St. Tammany Parish."
Cobbling together funding from a variety of federal, state, parish and private sources, the parish began paving segments of the old railway, with the first being completed in September 1994. A contest was held and the Police Jury chose the name Tammany Trace.
View full sizeJim Monahan, 74, rides his distinctive three-wheeled bike on the Tammany Trace several times a week."I used to go out and Rollerblade on it," Davis said. "One of the things we said was people would come from all over, and they have. Honestly, in the beginning I think I was just trying to save that corridor."
Residents want Trace extended
Like many others across St. Tammany, Rick Wilke can tick off the development in the parish that was done badly. But Wilke, head of the umbrella organization over the parish's neighborhood associations, says the Tammany Trace is one development the parish did well.
"I would be surprised if you heard anyone that expressed a negative opinion about it," Wilke said. "More like, 'Can you extend it to us? Please hurry."'
On the wish list from parish residents, Wilke said, are Trace extensions from Covington down to Madisonville and from Madisonville to Mandeville.
Lisa Pratt Maddox, director of the Tammany Trace and its 25 full- and part-time employees, sees additions in the Trace's future. "I don't think it's reached it buildout," she said from her office at the Trace headquarters, a refurbished caboose at the Koop Drive trailhead. "Hopefully, one day you can ride your bike to work" using the Trace and pathways connected to it.
As segments of the Trace were completed, "trailheads" opened at several locations -- Slidell, Mandeville, Koop Drive, Abita Springs, Covington and, just last year, Lacombe. The trailheads offer parking, public restrooms and, in some cases, museums and other attractions such as playgrounds, bandstands and "splash pads" that become crowded with kids on sweltering south Louisiana afternoons.
"All our local businesses have benefited from that being there," Abita Springs Mayor Louis Fitzmorris said of the town's trailhead, which features a pavilion from the 1884 Louisiana World's Cotton and Centennial Exposition, a playground and a museum fashioned from the bachelor's quarters of the old Longbranch Hotel.
"We've kind of become a destination again, with people parking here and using Abita as their starting off and ending point," Fitzmorris said.
Trailheads are busy
In addition to providing comfort to Trace users, the trailheads in Abita, Covington and Mandeville host numerous events, ranging from farmer's and crafts markets to art shows and concerts.
"Look what's happened in Mandeville. Look what's happened in Covington. The trailheads have become gathering places," said Bruce Wainer, a developer and longtime president of the Tammany Trace Foundation, a fund-raising organization dedicated to Trace improvements.
While the Trace doesn't fit the traditional south Louisiana economic development model -- think large-scale industrial plants or, on the north shore, shopping developments and office parks -- supporters say it nevertheless plays an important, if more nuanced, role in shaping the area's economy.
Local shops cater to runners and cyclists. Some restaurants and cafes near and along the Trace, such as the popular Abita Brew Pub, see business jump on nice weekends. And the events at the trailheads attract people and their money.
"My business wouldn't be where it is without it," Sperier said one busy recent afternoon at his bike shop.
While there are no studies probing the Trace's economic impact, Brenda Reine Bertus, executive director of the St. Tammany Economic Development Foundation, said the Trace, like quality schools and a low crime rate, can be marketed to businesses seeking to locate in the parish.
"They (companies) are concerned about the schools and quality of life," she said.
Not that economic development is on the mind of Landra Pichon-Jones as she rides the Trace each morning, savoring the damp cool of the early, quiet hours. That she can enjoy the stretch from Slidell to Lacombe while at work is a bonus, or as she puts it, "another blessing."
One of 21 rangers who patrol the Trace, Pichon-Jones spends her workdays answering questions, picking up trash, watching for trouble and, even occasionally, helping the Trace's abundant wildlife make its way from one side of the road to the other.
"It's the best job," she said. "You meet a lot of happy people."
Bob Warren can be reached at bwarren@timespicayune.com or 985.898.4832.