photo by: RiverFront & Center

The community group RiverFront & Center created the pictured design concept for the proposed Kaw River Commons project. It's one of the potential paths the section of the Lawrence Loop slated to be constructed between Seventh Street and Constant Park adjacent to downtown Lawrence could take.

What might the path from Seventh Street to Constant Park along the Kansas River — or even the path across the river itself — look like a few years from now? That’s what community members and the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department are currently working to envision.

That stretch is one of the few remaining segments left to be completed in the Lawrence Loop, which will eventually be a continuous 22-mile concrete path around the city. The Journal-World spoke with Parks and Recreation assistant director Mark Hecker on Friday morning to learn more about where the project is going from here.

As the Journal-World has reported, the City of Lawrence hosted an open house on Dec. 14 to kick off the public engagement process for this segment. But that was only the beginning. Hecker said that the open house was intended to be mostly informational in nature, to get the concept in front of people and let them start thinking about what they’d like to see.

That concept extends beyond just a straightforward pedestrian path. In 2021, a group of architects, artists and trail advocates called RiverFront & Center presented the Lawrence City Commission with the “Kaw River Commons” design concept, which imagines multiple crossings and connecting segments near the existing bridge across the river near downtown Lawrence, plus elements like a covered terrace on one part of the riverbank, trail extensions and connections and a downtown skywalk.

The concepts from two years ago aren’t necessarily staying exactly the same, though. The next step, Hecker told the Journal-World, is for the planning process to return to the steering committee that’s helping to guide the project, soon after the start of 2024. Based on that group’s input, adjusted design concepts will be prepared for future public meetings slated to take place throughout January and early February. The project plan will also need to gain approval from the Lawrence City Commission, then apply for grant funding.

“As we go through that process, we’ll get down to ‘OK, here’s what we want to try to propose for a federal grant,'” Hecker said. “Right now, there’s too many lines on the paper. You really need to get it down to ‘If we go this route, how much will that cost?'”

Hecker said the goal is to submit an application for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant program by the end of February. As the Journal-World has reported, Lawrence could receive anywhere between $1 million and $25 million toward the project through that program since it’s categorized as a “rural” area by the Department of Transportation’s standards.

Hecker said the hope is that the project will be made more impactful by leveraging both city and federal funds.

“I think that’s important,” Hecker said. “We could just run a trail up Seventh Street and hit every intersection downtown, or we could go out and activate the river so people can get down on the river corridor through downtown and then connect to downtown. I think it just has a lot of potential if we go a little bit bigger than thinking ‘What can city funds do?'”

By “activating the river,” Hecker means capitalizing on the opportunity to connect the downtown area to North Lawrence by more than just the existing bridge over the Kansas River. The Kaw River Commons concept includes three different river crossings.

Whether all of the supplementary paths, helices and other bells and whistles will make it through to the final design is another story. For example, Hecker said he didn’t think the city would ever want to construct three separate bridges across the river, since just one would be a costly item.

“I want to start taking some of those off the map,” Hecker said. “There’s a couple that cross Sixth Street over the top. Those are interesting, but they don’t really get us to where we want to go. I think those might be down the road in the future. …We’ve probably dreamed way bigger than we can afford, but that’s OK. It’s good to start there and work backwards a little bit.”

Though this segment isn’t the last part of the Lawrence Loop that’s still left to complete, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting nearer.

According to the City of Lawrence’s road construction project database, this section and the Iowa Crossing project — a short section of the loop’s trail near the intersection of Iowa Street and Kansas Highway 10 — are both in the planning phase. Two other segments, Michigan Street to Sandra Shaw Park and Eighth Street to the Santa Fe Depot, are in the design phase.

“(It’s exciting), especially for those who have been involved for years and years,” Hecker said. “Because right now, I can see the whole completion of the Lawrence Loop in the five-year (Capital Improvement Plan) for the city. That’s never happened before — there’s that step, there’s that step and there’s that, and we’re done. That’s pretty cool. Parks and Rec has been working on this for, gosh, 20 years? We’re getting to the end stretch here.”