Trails a tangible part of quality of life

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Guillermo Aguilar walks the Yakima Greenway every day to keep his blood pressure under control.

The slim 53-year-old with a slight potbelly has walked a stretch of the Greenway from Kmart to Walmart since being diagnosed with hypertension five years ago.

"The doctor told me to exer-cise," he said while walking along a portion of the 10-mile path recently. "I control my blood pressure with exercise -- no pills."

Trails such as the Greenway can play an important part in both the physical and economic health of a community.

A national survey of 2,300 recent and prospective home buyers found that nearly half said the availability of walking and jogging trails would greatly influence their decision to move to a new community. Trails rated even higher than parks, outdoor swimming pools and playgrounds, according to the 2008 survey by the National Association of Home Builders.

And as money-crunched cities and counties close pools and parks, more people may come to rely on trails that are developed and maintained by private, non-profit organizations.

"Yakima County is out of the park business," said County Commissioner Mike Leita. "It's now crystal clear that (local government funds) are not being spent on quality of life."

"The county, I would say, looks at our pathways as a quality-of-life asset," he said. "Pathways are kind of a moving park."

Trails are among a myriad of issues to be examined by a newly formed 10-member panel created by county commissioners to assess a wide range of quality of life issues.

The scope of the panel will be wide, but one concern is threat to existing parks, said Larry Mattson, chairman of the Quality of Life Committee and a member of the Yakima Greenway board of directors.

"I think we do know that the more you can keep kids active, the less likely they are to get into trouble," he said. "A lot of these things tie together."

In recent years, Yakima County has closed all but one park and is looking for a group or organization to take over
operations at its remaining facility, Eschbach Park.

But as local tax dollars for recreation have declined, trail systems operated or being developed by non-profit organizations, such as the Yakima Greenway Foundation and the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy, have held a bit steadier.

Cowiche Canyon Conservancy operates about 14 miles of trail west of Yakima and is helping develop an 80-plus-mile trail to eventually extend from Yakima to Mount Rainier. City officials were in Washington, D.C., last week lobbying for $350,000 in federal money to help develop the trail.

Ten miles to the west of the Greenway, the Naches trail is expanding eastward. It begins at an old train depot in Naches and follows an abandoned rail line along U.S. Highway 12. There are long-term plans to eventually connect it to the Yakima Greenway.

About a mile is already paved and work should begin by summer to extend the paving another two-and-a-half miles. The Greenway Foundation has roughly $450,000 set aside for the project.

Although now only one mile long, the Naches trail sees from 200 to 300 people a day during spring and summer, said Jeff Ranger, Naches town administrator.

"It's amazing the amount of use we're getting," he said. "We get a lot of people walking and hiking. A lot of people are starting exercise programs and kids are learning to ride bikes."

The Yakima Valley is not alone in seeing the development of trail systems.

In 1986, there were only a handful of trails built on abandoned railroad lines, such as what is happening with the Naches trail.

Now, there are more than 20,000 miles of such trails nationwide. In Washington, there are 73 trails totaling 959 miles, and 22 trails totaling another 108 miles are currently being planned.

"I think we've seen a number of small organizations pop up to maintain those sort of rails-to-trails or urban opportunities," said Jonathan Guzzo, advocacy director of the Washington Trails Association.

This isn't to say that private groups are immune from the lagging economy.

A target date to connect to the Greenway hasn't been determined because of a lack of funding, Greenway Executive Director Al Brown said.

"We can't build it all at once unless someone hands me a bag of $4 million," he said.

The Yakima Greenway sees more than 500,000 visitors a year, Brown said.

While there's been no formal study on the economic benefit of the Greenway, Brown see clear advantages.

"The economic benefit, I think, to the community is getting people out, active and giving them a place to recreate," he said.

Yakima County Business Development Director Lisa Smith concurs.

There is more to the econ-
omic value of what recreational opportunities bring to the community than can be easily measured, she said.

Often such amenities are the deciding factor in whether a family or business decides to locate here, she said.

"You'd be surprised at how important that stuff is in luring professionals to the Valley," she said.

Many cyclists from Western Washington are drawn here by the many trails and warm weather during the spring and summer, said Barb Gilbert, a volunteer with Connections Coalition, a nonprofit organization seeking to connect the many different trails in the Upper Valley.

Connecting the trails would only make the Yakima Valley a more attractive place for recreation, she said.

"If a person wants to walk from point A to point B with less barriers, it just makes it more feasible for people who want to get around the Valley on a bike."

Aside from any monetary benefits, health is another reason to assess whether enough outdoor recreational opportunities are available, said Steve Hill, director of human services for Yakima County.

Yakima County's obesity rate is more than 32 percent, according the Yakima Health District. The national average is 30 percent.

Giving everyone access to such healthy recreational opportunities is impotant,
said Barbara Culp, execu-
tive director of the nonprofit Bicycle Alliance of Washington.

"We have a vision that someday everybody has a trail a half a mile from home that they can bike or walk," she said. "You'll find that even trails that are only a few blocks or miles long are well used, especially if they connect things."

* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 509-577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.