Catching up with Wasson Way

By Robin Gee

While a lot is happening “behind the scenes” on federal, state and city projects, it often seems they move along at a snail’s pace. Yet, much progress has been happening on the ambitious plans to create a pedestrian, stroller and bike trail encircling Cincinnati. The plan is actually to create both a 24-mile inner loop and a 34-mile outer loop known as “The Crown.”

One of the first sections of that crown was Hyde Park’s very own Wasson Way. That section of the project is mostly complete, but last spring, Wasson Way staff, supporters and community members had reason to celebrate an important milestone.

Work was completed on a small section of the trail taking Wasson Way across Montgomery Road and onto Xavier University’s property. It was a small section, but it will have a big impact, said Wasson Way Board Chair Sean McGrory.

McGrory said it is an important piece of the puzzle that will help achieve one of the project’s goals — to connect Wasson Way up to what is known as the Innovation District on Martin Luther King where the UC Digital Futures Building is and ultimately, connect over onto UC’s main campus.

One of the things this will do, he said, is connect Xavier and UC using Wasson Way. 

“So the section that we opened represents the first step onto Xavier’s campus. It’s a small section of trail, the smallest opening of a section that we have. But there’s a reason for that…getting across Montgomery Road safely was a challenge and a fully signalized traffic crossing has now been installed and is up and running.” 

The section is about 100 yards north of Dana Avenue on Montgomery. Before the mid-block crossing, people coming off the Wasson Way trail would have to walk up to Dana to cross safely. The new section will run right past the new Xavier College of Medicine Building currently under construction. For now, the trail stops on the property to wait for the completion of the building sometime in the next year or two. 

The Xavier section, unlike any of the other portions of the trail, is owned by the university. As a private entity, the plan required a public-private partnership involving a different set of restrictions and requirements. One issue, for example, was that funding for the private (Xavier) portion had to come from private funds and not any of the federal transportation grants that fund the rest of the projects.

Once completed, having a walkable, bikeable trail connecting students between the two educational institutions and to other areas of the city will be a plus for all involved, McGrory said.

“With [Xavier’s] College of Medicine and with their other allied health sciences…This will provide a way to get up to the hospital…We expect it’s going to be a very, very active corridor,” he said.

He noted the Xavier section would also “fill in a missing tooth in our smile.” A section completed about a year and a half ago starts on Woodburn and goes up to Blair Court in Avondale, but right now it doesn’t connect directly to the trail from Montgomery Road. Once completed, the trail would connect, running by the College of Medicine, across campus and over to where it picks up again at Woodburn behind the Xavier Alumni Center (the old F&W/Coca Cola Bottling building). 

Blair Court runs into a newly refurbished park with new baseball diamonds funded by the Reds Community Fund. Out of the park, the trail picks up again and heads to Martin Luther King and Reading Road, to the hospitals and the Innovation District. That section is in design right now, and the plan is to start construction by the end of this year or early next, McGrory said.

On the other end

The plan for the other end of Wasson Way, where it ends now across the Ault Park bridge, involves a series of switchbacks that will take people to Old Red Bank Road, connecting to the Red Bank Trail and on to Murray Path. Murray Path will eventually be extended through Mariemont, down the hill to the library and across Wooster Pike. From there, McGrory said, it will run behind Kroger and connect to the Little Miami Trail in Newtown behind I-50 West.

“All that is in motion now, too,” McGrory said, “In fact, the first section of trail in Mariemont is actually down, between Miami Avenue and Hiawatha, down to the Mariemont Library.” 

The first section sits in the middle and is not connected to either end, he said. It’s called Trolly Park because it’s where the old streetcars would run from Madisonville to Milford. Right now it’s a utility corridor used by Duke Energy. The trail will follow that corridor and planners are working with Great Parks in Columbia Township to connect it to the Little Miami Trail.

There are more plans underway, McGrory said. The hope is to take Wasson Way all the way to Otto Armleder Park. The idea is to use the abandoned rail line there, stay behind all the industrial buildings and pop out in Armleder. If they can make that so, he said, it will be the longest stretch of trail without a street crossing, from Paxton Avenue to Wooster Pike in front of Armleder. From there, the trail would connect to the Lunken Trail, heading to downtown, Sawyer Point and connecting to the end of the Little Miami Trail by Beechmont. 

“There’s a lot of steps that still have to happen for this. There’s some rights of way that need to be acquired, but ODOT [Ohio Department of Transportation] has been doing design and feasibility work. We had an open house on this last fall, and ODOT gathered a lot of public input.”

Help is always needed and appreciated

While a lot has been done, there’s still quite a lot to do. Wasson Way and the other trail projects rely on grants, donations, fundraisers, but they also need volunteers to help with a variety of projects. As each section is completed, it begins a new phase — landscaping and maintenance are an ongoing need. To learn more about the project plans and volunteer opportunities, go to wassonway.org.