START announces grant for trailhead - The Buffalo News

START announces grant for trailhead from the Friday, February 18th, 2000  issue of The Buffalo News

By Kathy Kellogg

LITTLE VALLEY - The Southern Tier Association for Rails to Trails, or START, on Thursday announced a $59,000 grant from the National Recreational Trails Program will be used to build a trailhead along a planned 12-mile recreational path.

START Chairman Brad Walters said the trailhead, in turn, will create green space for a nearby industrial development site and boost other projects being considered by the Little Valley Revitalization and Economic Development committee, which he also heads.

The site chosen for the trailhead - usually the gathering place for anyone using the trail - is a quarter-mile portion of an abandoned railroad bed, which is to be converted to a multiple use recreational trail by the nonprofit Cattaraugus Local Development Corp. The site is at the foot of Main Street and is close to the center of the future trail.

Plans call for construction of a self-contained rest stop or starting point on the trail. Two gazebos, restrooms, seven picnic tables, 10 benches and a shelter for horses and snowmobiles will be built. Also contemplated are some trail maintenance and emergency equipment items and rehabilitation of a turn-of-the-century caboose.

The rail bed extends through Little Valley south to Salamanca and north to the village of Cattaraugus. The CLDC has applied for a $1.3 million grant from the state Department of Transportation to develop the entire rail bed for future multiple-use recreational activities such as hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling.

Rail owner Cattaraugus County Industrial Development Agency last year approved CLDC's request to take over the property. Renewed abandonment proceedings to determine if the organization is in line for preferential rights to the railroad may be part of that process, said CLDC Executive Director Rick LeFeber.

LeFeber said CLDC's grant application has been forwarded to Albany for further review. He described the trailhead development and the National Recreational trails grant as his organization's "training ground" in the first portion of a two-phase development of the full trail.

The trailhead grant, the only award for the entire three-county Southern Tier region, will be administered by the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

The project will be enhanced by a Cattaraugus County demonstration project to design a commercial development on a nearby 6.25 acre Main Street parcel, approved in December by the county's Development and Agriculture Committee. That site now houses the county's vacant Department of Public Works barns, and negotiations for its purchase or donation are under way between the village and the county.

The final scope of that work is yet to be defined, but it may create conservation easements and tie a six-acre village park to the planned trailhead and CLDC's 12-mile trail. The commercial design project is in line for $3,000 in county aid and a $5,000 pot of funds left over from a Circuit Rider project.