GRAND HAVEN, MI (WHTC) – A 125 thousand-dollar financial boost has come for the Ottawa County Parks Foundation.
The money from the Grand Haven Area Community Foundation will be spread over a two-year period for the Grand River Explorers Trail’s Stearns Bayou Connector. That is part of the OCPF’s Grand River Greenway Campaign that aims to raise over 10 million dollars in “anticipated” new public funding to what Parks department officials say is “the most critical remaining unfinished link in the regional pathway system,” a trail connecting Grand Rapids, the Grand Valley State University main campus in Allendale and Grand Haven.
The GHAC grant will pay for a trail on the 2.4-mile gap between Connor Bayou and the Mercury Drive Pathway in Grand Haven Township. A pedestrian crossing over the bayou is included.
The Parks department’s Grand River Greenway Initiative, more than two decades old, has preserved over 24 hundred acres of land by creating 13 parks and open spaces through 20 million dollars in mostly public funding, with the department planning to spend another 21 million over the next five years to acquire a thousand more acres and construct 27 miles of new “multi-modal” pathway.
