A master plan for bicycling and pedestrian paths in Lebanon is being drafted by city officials, about a year after the concept was first raised.

For government, that’s unprecedented speed, Derek Warren, the Lebanon Planning Department’s zoning coordinator, told the Boone County Healthy Coalition at its monthly meeting Wednesday.

“To have this moving forward this quickly is just amazing,” Warren said.

An open house to present the plan’s initial concepts and get comment from the public was also held from 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Lebanon Municipal Building, 401 S. Meridian St., Lebanon.

At the open house, representatives from the engineering firm Butler Fairman & Seufert met with residents, explaining the draft proposal and charting on a large map areas where sidewalks should be installed.

A huge step in filling sidewalk gaps will begin next week, Warren said, when the Indiana Department of Transportation begins repairing, and installing, sidewalks along Lebanon Street from just north of Interstate 65 to Witham Health Services.

Warren said the bike and pedestrian plan emerged after he; Richard Stroup, of the Friends of Boone County Trails and a former director of the healthy coalition; and Lebanon Planning Director Charlie Campbell, all active bicyclists, attended a workshop in Kokomo presented by the Active Living Coalition and the Indiana State Department of Health.

Kokomo “is really being progressive about their trail system,” Warren said. “It is creating new business and niche business.”

Residents of Kokomo who erected walls around their homes because they were originally opposed to trails are now removing those barriers and advertising that their property is on a trail, Warren said.

He, Campbell and Stroup met with Mayor Huck Lewis after the Kokomo workshop, Warren said. Last September, a workshop introduced the concept of bike and pedestrian trail expansion.

 Pete Fritz, now the ISDH healthy communities planner, helped write Lebanon’s 2007 comprehensive plan when he was with Ratio Architects, and was at the Kokomo workshop, Warren said.

In May, Fritz moderated a seminar on the state’s Complete Streets program, describing how it could be implemented in Lebanon.
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