WINAMAC — Paths through town will be added and improved to allow for increased and safer pedestrian travel.
Two state grants totaling more than $300,000 will lengthen the Panhandle Pathway and rehabilitate sidewalks leading to schools and other town destinations.
The Panhandle Pathway is a 22-mile paved trail that extends from Winamac south through Star City and Royal Center before ending near France Park in Cass County.
Plans are in place to continue the trail where it currently ends at Superior and Burson streets north along the town's former railroad corridor to a town parking lot between Main and Pearl streets. The extension will be 12 feet wide.
The Indiana Department of Transportation is funding the project with an about $250,000 allocation from its Safe Routes to Schools program, according to Dave Bennett, a Winamac resident and chairman of the project.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Recreational Trails Program is funding another extension of the Panhandle Pathway with a roughly $51,000 contribution. That will lengthen the trail almost 3 miles north to Ind. 14.
The Safe Routes to Schools funds will also go toward improving the sidewalks along Superior Street east of the Panhandle Pathway to Riverside Drive. Sidewalk improvements will continue along the west side of Riverside Drive north toward downtown and south toward the Eastern Pulaski School Corp.
"The advantage of that is it'll go right by the Winamac Public Library as well, so it'll have a nice tie-in there," Bennett said.
He added the sidewalk improvements will also be near Winamac Town Park, creating what he called "a downtown pedestrian loop."
Eastern Pulaski School Corp.'s campus has a high school, middle school and elementary school with a total student population of about 1,270.
Dan Foster, superintendent of the corporation, said the new sidewalks will be beneficial for students who live too close to school for the buses to pick up.
"We do have a certain radius around the school that we do not pick up, so it certainly gives some students a better opportunity to have a safer route walking to school," he said, adding many sidewalks near the school suffer from cracks and unevenness.
Better sidewalks and the Panhandle Pathway extension may motivate local youth to be more active, Foster continued.
"With the combination of those two things, I really feel like in the next year or so, we might see some more students walking on a daily basis," he said.
Foster added the schools will be working with the Friends of the Panhandle Pathway, the nonprofit organization that manages the trail, to promote the path's benefits to students.
Bennett said he expects construction to begin this spring and conclude by August.