Bend Park and Rec, city of Bend partner on revived plans to upgrade stretch of Deschutes River Trail

(Update: Adding video and comments from BPRD representative, board member)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The Bend Park and Recreation Board joint planning efforts with the city of Bend to make a project come to life after ten years of waiting. The updates from Tuesday nights meeting is to upgrade Riverfront Street and a stretch of the Deschutes River Trail, the city's most heavily used trail.

The Bend Park and Recreation Board got an update Tuesday night on joint planning efforts with the city of Bend to upgrade Riverfront Street and a stretch of the Deschutes River Trail, the city's most heavily used trail.

The trail between Galveston Road and Miller's Landing Park has more than 1,200 trail users per day, planners say.

It runs along Riverfront Street, which is in poor condition, with a narrow, 40-foot right of way, city Transportation and park district Planner Henry Stroud and city Mobility Director David Abbas said in an issue summary for the meeting.

Plans for improving the trail there have been in the works since 2015, with options partially developed of a shared “greenway” or replacing a sidewalk with a 10-foot-wide trail, but it was determined the street had deteriorated to a point where the cost topped what the park district had available.

There is the idea of a shared street hybrid concept known as the greenway made a board member nervous. Ariel Méndez said, "I get nervous when I hear terms like 'complete streets.' We've seen a couple of those examples, and I think it's pretty clear which users I think are prioritized and it's not people walking, biking, or roaming."

But this year, the city, assisted by the park district, secured a $340,000 grant from the Bend Metropolitan Planning Organization, and the two entities will be working on an intergovernmental agreement on the project in coming months. The park district has about $700,000 in system development charge funding allocated for the project.

The city plans to combine these funds to complete the project, they said. The need for more city funds or other funding sources will be determined on the updated costs from the design phase of the project.

Stroud said, "This has been a project that has been high priority for the park district for the better part of over 10 years here. And we're really excited to move this project forward. We want to close all the gaps that we can along the Deschutes River Trail in downtown Bend. We are putting a lot of money into the Drake Park project -- several million dollars, which is working on improving the trail there. This is going to be the last piece of the puzzle in downtown Bend."