A South Bend neighborhood group has received help from the city to establish what they’re calling a new linear park or urban trail.
Joe Molnar, the city’s assistant director of growth and opportunity, says setting aside park space wasn’t a priority when South Bend’s near west side neighborhood developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So officials are now trying to address that.
On Thursday the city’s redevelopment commission awarded $50,000 to the nonprofit South Bend Greenway Conservancy, matching a grant the group has won from the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County.
Molnar says the urban trail will connect cultural points of interest like Indiana University South Bend’s Civil Rights Heritage Center, Notre Dame’s Hansell Center, and the History Museum, with pocket parks sprinkled in.
It will mean widening the sidewalk in spots, similar to the city’s recently built Coal Line and LINK trails. The trail will start at City Cemetery and snake through the neighborhood to end eventually at the Kroc Center.
”Using those properties as a trail through them, so that you can kind of go north-south through the neighborhood,"Molnar says. "And that’s like the long-term goal but really it’s adding this park space along the trail in certain areas, which is really needed in that neighborhood.”
