East Bay Township will get $400,000 to put toward the first segment of the Three Mile Trail extension, TART Trails Director of Strategic Engagement Brian Beauchamp tells The Ticker. The money comes from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund (MNRTF), which this week announced $41.7 million in acquisition and development grants for Michigan natural resources and public recreation projects. The funding is the latest step in a nearly two-decade effort to complete the trail.

The first bits of the Three Mile Trail were put on the ground all the way back in 2006, with that initial phase extending two miles from the Traverse City State Park beach on US-31 to a terminus near the intersection of Three Mile and South Airport. TART Executive Director Julie Clark previously told The Ticker that continuing the trail to Hammond Road “was planned to be part of a road-widening project that was going to be completed in 2008.” But that road-widening project never happened, and without a wider Three Mile, the road right-of-way was not big enough to accommodate the trail. Other difficulties around the corridor – specifically, the amount of wetland and private property – posed barriers to routing the path any other way.

Because of these challenges, TART leaders believed for years that the Three Mile Trail would never be completed. But the project got a resurrection in 2020 when the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (GTRLC) announced it was buying the 166-acre former Mitchell Creek Golf Course. GTRLC’s plans for the parcel included a new headquarters and a public nature preserve, now called the Don and Jerry Oleson Mitchell Creek Meadows Preserve. The nonprofit also contacted TART, seeing potential to complete the Three Mile Trail by routing it through the property.

Since then, TART and GTRLC have been working with a range of partners – including Norte and East Bay Township – to finish the trail. In 2021, the East Bay Township Board of Trustees approved TART’s initial conceptual design for the extension. The following year, engineering work officially began. And last year, the GTRLC “acquired a new strategic addition” to the preserve, prompting “a realignment of the trail, making it a more direct connection and significantly reducing the overall cost of construction,” per TART’s website.

The Three Mile Trail carries an estimated $12.5 million price tag, with $7.5 million to be covered by public funds and $5 million by private dollars. Earlier this year, East Bay Township trustees committed $1 million to the project and agreed to be the owner and maintainer of the trail. As of June, TART had raised $1.9 million in public funds and just under $800,000 in private funds, and was in the process of pursuing several major grants for the project, including the one from the MNRTF.

Funded by revenues from state-owned oil and gas assets, the MNRTF gives grants in two different categories: acquisition of public land and development of public recreation facilities. East Bay Township received $400,000 for development, the maximum grant amount allowed in that category. According to Beauchamp, the grant “will be matched with a federal appropriation TART received in 2022” from a $1.5 trillion bipartisan Congressional spending bill.

Between the grant and the federal appropriation, Beauchamp says TART and its partners should be able to break ground on the first phase of the Three Mile Trail extension as early as spring 2025, depending on “the action of the legislature to get these funds in hand.” That first phase “is just under a quarter mile and will commence at the current endpoint at South Airport Road and proceed south to a proposed trailhead/parking area across from the Woodcreek Subdivision,” he says.

“We now have enough funding to get construction started on that first phase, and then we’ll be continuing to fundraise for the rest of the project as we build,” Beauchamp adds. “We have some work to do to put bids out; that would be the next step in the process. We are absolutely aiming for a 2025 groundbreaking, but we'll have more clarity on the timeline early next year.”

TART is also waiting on another potentially sizable grant from Michigan’s Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP), but Beauchamp doesn’t expect to hear back about that application until March.

For her part, East Bay Township Supervisor Beth Friend thinks fundraising and grantmaking will be easier once this first part of the trail is on the ground. “It will be a great physical illustration of the rest of the trail that's to come,” she says. “I think it will really help us be successful in later grants and fundraising for other segments of the trail.”

In addition to the Three Mile Trail funding, the MNRTF’s latest recommendations include one other grant in Grand Traverse County: $400,000 for a new pedestrian footbridge over the Boardman/Ottaway River. That project is managed by the Grand Traverse County Conservation District, which is planning to add a new 160-foot river crossing to its Grand Traverse Natural Education Reserve. The reserve spans 505 acres and approximately seven miles of wooded trails on either side of the Boardman/Ottaway, and is used by the county as a “natural environmental classroom for area youth.” The new bridge will be built at the site of the old Sabin dam, which was removed in 2018 as part of a sweeping river restoration effort.

Other northern Michigan MNRTF grants include $322,000 for a new open space park in Boyne City, $400,000 for Nakwema Trail development in Charlevoix, and $237,500 for a fishing pier project in Central Lake.