photo by: Bremen Keasey

A sign for the Lawrence Loop posted along the paved path at the Lawrence Rotary Arboretum in Lawrence. Local advocates for trails are happy to see the city's long-term plan that supports connecting the Lawrence Loop, a 22-mile continuous pedestrian paved pathway around the city.

As the city gets set to finalize its budget for 2025, one long-term project that advocates hope can stay in the plans for the city is the completion of the Lawrence Loop trail network, a vision and process at least 10 years in the making.

The Loop will be a network of 22 miles of continuous, paved walking and biking paths around the city. At the moment, 18 miles of the trail are finished, but the three missing segments currently have $3.6 million set aside to complete them in the Capital Improvement Plan draft. That includes $1.2 million for completing a section from Michigan Street to Sandra Shaw Park, with the help of a $564,000 grant the city received from the Kansas Department of Transportation back in 2021, as the Journal-World previously reported.

The idea of the Lawrence Loop first came up about ten years ago, according to Chris Tilden, the chair of Friends of Lawrence Area Trails and a senior associate researcher at the University of Kansas.

Tilden said various paved trails were built in the city, especially in parts west of the city near K-10. But Tilden said it was only when the trail at Burcham Park near the Kansas River was paved back in 2015 that Mark Hecker, assistant director of the parks department, outlined a potential plan to have many more connected routes through the city.

“That was really when public discussion started about, ‘Gosh, we need to complete the Loop,'” Tilden said.

Since then, progress has been incremental, but helped by grants from KDOT and local foundations like the Sunflower Foundation that the city “aggressively pursued,” Tilden said. Despite that, there were a lot of moments when it seemed like the project might lose momentum.

But in 2022, as the Journal-World reported, the city allocated $10 million in funds for the 2023 CIP that would finish up the remaining three links in the city and other projects along the Loop. When that happened, Tilden said it felt like a huge win for advocates of the trail system.

​​”For the first time on paper the city formally expressed a plan to ensure the Loop is completed,” Tilden said.

Those three projects — paved paths connecting Michigan Street to Sandra Shaw Park, Seventh Street to Constant Park and Queens Road to Kasold Drive — are the hardest sections to complete, Tilden said, with the Kasold section slated as the final connector. As it stands, that final section has its funding covered in 2029.

With the Lawrence City Commission set to make a final vote on the 2025 budget Tuesday evening, there could still be changes to the budget. But Tilden believes the trails are an asset that attracts people looking for a walkable community to Lawrence, and it’s an even better deal that there is a good amount of outside funding available.

“We really get a return on investment by being able to utilize funds other than city coffers to fund a significant amount of construction associated with our trail system,” Tilden said.

Along with advocating for the Lawrence Loop, Tilden said his organization, Friends of Lawrence Area Trails, has worked to help build a community among trail users and illustrate the Loop’s value and accessibility to all residents.

One aspect Tilden highlighted of the group’s work was putting out a resource for people with mobility limitations that highlighted areas on the Loop that the group felt were safe and comfortable for them to use. FLAT has other resources on its website, like trail maps with descriptions of the completed sections of the Loop and other trails in the city.

With all the advocacy and resources for residents, Tilden said the goal of FLAT is to continue to expand and enhance the experience of the city’s trails and other walkable areas to showcase a unique asset of the city.

“We’re taking whatever small steps we can to promote continued building of the trail system and trying to get even more people to utilize what is a really great asset,” Tilden said.