There’s a well-known proverb that speaks to working together in order to “go far” or essentially have long-lasting success.
In the City of Leland, the long-lasting success of a revitalization effort to create more walkable, bikeable, beautiful streets and in turn, a healthier community, is something that warrants togetherness and is why community members, business owners, Mayor Kenny Thomas and others were on hand Thursday morning for a walking tour and community discussion about what that would look like.
The Mississippi State University Extension contracted Portland, Oregon-based ALTA Planning + Design to assist with the revitalization effort as part of an initiative led by AIM for CHangE — Advancing, Inspiring, Motivating for Community Health through Extension — which works to create community coalitions to solve health issues alongside local champions.
Leland native Dr. Curt Lacy serves as the coordinator for the Mississippi State Extension Service Delta Region and was in attendance along with Alexis Hamilton, Sharkey County Extension Agent I, AIM for CHangE.
Alta Planning + Design is an active transportation company dedicated to creating active, healthy communities through planning, landscape architecture, engineering, and education/encouragement programs.
With Alta’s core values being set to bring about positive change by creating places that are geared toward moving people rather than cars, connecting community members to daily needs and human experience, and empowering them to live an active healthy lifestyle, theirs and AIM for CHangE’s core values overlapped in an ideal way.
Thursday began with an 8 a.m. walking tour of Leland’s main streets and destinations and continued with a 10 a.m. community discussion at the Leland Chamber of Commerce.
Senior city planner for Alta, Elizabeth Yarnall, was joined by Alta landscape architect and designer Chelsea Cole and Alta engineer Joe Gilbane.
“We are contracted with Mississippi State University Extension through the CDC and we’re looking to help everyone, myself included, to be a little more active everyday and one tool for that is to make our communities a little bit easier to get from place to place by walking or bicycling,” said Yarnall. “So we’re here today looking at key destinations in town like the grocery store to see how those might be better connected to neighborhoods or other destinations like the post office or bank so you could maybe come to town, go to the park and walk for all your errands and get a few more of those recommended minutes of activity each day — that’s the thought from the CDC.”
Yarnall pointed out she and her team have been working with Mississippi State Extension on the project over the last few months dating back to the spring.
“We were able to get some feedback from the Historic Preservation Committee as well as other property owners in the area and hear about some of their ideas for enhancing and making it a little easier to walk and bike around town,” she shared. “We took all of that feedback and developed an inventory for sidewalks and now we’re here today to verify that inventory and see if we missed a sidewalk.”
Yarnall projected an interactive map of the city and a “would be” trail or path that would connect key destinations and solicited attendees’ thoughts and feedback on “shared use paths.”
She proposed the first trail they discussed could start around the area of the railroad trestle and travel north with the other trails joining up together at a central location or focus of town such as the greenspace largely used for festivals and other outdoor events.
“It could be anything from crushed gravel to pavement, a trail that’s wide enough for two bikes to pass so both bicycles and walkers could use it,” she noted.
When it comes to a shared use path or sidewalk, Gilbane highlighted the three key components to consider are functionality, affordability and maintainability.
He shed light on the pros and cons of asphalt and concrete surfaces overtime and suggested ways to possibly implement methods to gradually improve upon installed trails as it can be costly depending on the material and amount of paving.
“We need to figure out where that balancing point is where we can leverage resources to get it implemented,” said Gilbane.
Particularly, when it comes to asphalt paving, it’s easy to use a less expensive construction method and it’s “kind of a weird material” in that it needs pressure to stay in shape and foot pressure would not suffice in that regard, he pointed out.
Alta professionals also observed morning drop off at the local schools and planned to observe dismissal as well to get an idea of where a trail would need to run for students who walk.
Community members gave their input on the locations where they believe the community would be best served by a trail.
Leland Historic Preservation Committee member Michael Scheuer was of the opinion most folks would opt for whatever is the most robust and lowest maintenance construction.
Washington County Library System executive director Sydney Cobb agreed, saying, “Longevity would be something you’d want to look at.”
Some community members had questions pertaining to the source of funding, coupled with concern of the project not being realized as that has been the case with previous others.
Sherry Smythe regarded lack of grant writing assistance as a “big disconnect” when it comes to funding access for community projects.
“I just want something to happen now, I don’t want to wait,” she said, recalling instances in which concepts have been presented to the community, but nothing further.
Hamilton talked about AIM for CHangE’s plan with the funding it is poised to receive from the CDC.
“I’m a part of the CDC grant and after the plans are developed, we’re going to implement the things that we can pay for, so a lot of it, we’ll be able to provide in stages. Some of the permanent things, we won’t be able to do, but we’re going to implement the parts that we can,” he said.
Yarnall highlighted that some grant requirements are similar to what is being done to have the trail installed in the city.
“I think what everyone may be politely saying is that the scale of this needs to be so modest that we can actually pull this off,” Scheure added. “We’ve got reams of great ideas that somebody paid for that never got implemented.”
The overall consensus was that an actionable, temporary plan, even if it is modest, would be a large step in the right direction.
Every person in attendance, whether Leland or Tribbett resident, was determined to do their part to see the project through.
They left no stone unturned when it came to their inquisition and among themselves, committed to continuing their collective involvement in seeing the revitalization project go far.
