Nearly scuttled Ohio River Trail extension in Cincinnati saved at last moment

A few months ago, construction of a long-planned segment of the Ohio River Trail on Cincinnati's East Side looked as if it had reached a dead end.

Now things look much better. The project is expected to go out to bid next summer and should open in November 2020.

Up in the air was a 2.2-mile segment of the hike and bike trail, long envisioned to eventually stretch 50 miles along the Ohio River from Aurora, Indiana through Hamilton County and Cincinnati to New Richmond, Ohio.

This part would connect an existing section of the trail in Anderson Township to Cincinnati and eventually Downtown.

The city of Cincinnati announced in September that it could no longer afford to pay the entire local match, $935,000. The budget was tight and the project was no longer a top priority, according to leaders in the transportation and engineering department. The city wanted to turn down $4 million in federal funds given to the region in 2012 for the project.

Supporters of the trail and leaders in communities along it were none too pleased.

"If the leaders of our community are going to continue to tout that we are a Tristate regional partnership, … then they need to start acting like it," Anderson Township Trustee Josh Gerth told The Enquirer in September.

Everyone hoped a solution could be found. And it has.

As 2017 drew to a close, a group of governments and a nonprofit health organization scraped together the local match, to keep the $4 million federal grant.

The trail that will run along Kellogg Avenue in the Cincinnati neighborhood of California from Salem Road to Sutton Road.

Where will the money come from?

Cincinnati: $435,000

Hamilton County Transportation Improvement District: $300,000

Anderson Township: $100,000

Interact for Health: $100,000

County Commissioner Todd Portune is happy the project was saved but hopes a scramble for funding, such as this, can be avoided in the future.

"The takeaway is that Hamilton County is 49 jurisdictions, and the county is part of a larger region of three states and eight counties," said Portune, who pushed for the project to stay alive from the county level. "What we do in each part of this closely interconnected community affects everybody else."

Editor's note: An earlier version had an inaccurate date of when this project would go out to bid.