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The Scranton Spoon pier, named by the public in a naming contest earlier this year, is part of the newly completed Scranton Flats Trail, a Towpath Extension project. The entire, 6-mile, $57 million extension from Harvard Road north to the future Canal Basin Park, is expected to be completed in 2018.

(Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)

After nearly a decade of planning, dreaming and on-the-ground construction, the civic partnership leading Cleveland's Towpath Trail is ready for its latest update to the public on how it plans to complete the final six miles of the project by 2018.

On Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m., The Towpath Trail Partnership Committee, will host a Towpath Trail Open House at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 2187 W. 14th Street, Cleveland.

The meeting is free and open to the public, but the nonprofit Canalway Partners, which is helping to lead the project, asks potential attendees to RSVP by emailing Amilyn Cedergreen at acedergreen@mbakercorp.com.

A map displays the segments of the Towpath Trail Extension project.

The meeting will focus on presentations by the Cleveland office of the engineering firm of DLZ, and Michael Baker Engineering, on Stages 1 and 4 of the Towpath Trail Extension Project – the last two major sections to be built south of the future Canal Basin Park on Columbus Road Peninsula in Cleveland.

From Canal Basin, the much anticipated Lake Link Trail – a separate project led by LAND Studio, Cleveland MetroParks and the Trust for Public Land, will extend north to connect Clevelanders to Lake Erie at Whiskey Island.

The aim of the Towpath Extension Project is to build the northernmost six miles of the 110-mile Towpath system, which roughly follows the original route of the 1832 Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath from downtown Cleveland to Zoar and New Philadelphia.

Cleveland's city planning website estimates the cost of the project at $57 million. The city is one of the four principal entities planning and building the Towpath Extension in the city, along with Cuyahoga County, MetroParks and Canalway Partners. Funding to date has been a mix of federal, state and local.

The goal of the Towpath overall is to regenerate rural and industrial landscapes, to promote awareness of Ohio's rich history and to awaken Northeast Ohioans to vast stretches of overlooked and forgotten terrain in their midst.

The Towpath is now largely complete south of Cleveland, but building the final six miles north of Harvard Road on the south side of the city has proven extremely difficult thanks to environmental issues and complexities of land ownership.

Tim Donovan, executive director of Canalway Partners, said that Thursday's meeting is designed to meet federal requirements attached to the government's partial funding of the final sections of the trail system.

The meeting also "offers an opportunity to remind people involved with the project of the original vision and where we're at in terms of trying to fulfill that vision," he said.

Specifically, the meeting will examine the "preferred route alternative" for the ironically named Stage 1 of the northern section, which will extend north from Harvard Avenue and cross the Cuyahoga River at the southern edge of the ArcelorMittal steel plant.

A map shows the preferred alignment for Stage 1 of the Towpath Trail Extension in Cleveland.

The irony is that as the most difficult trail segment, Stage 1 may be one of the last if not the last to be completed.

"We had to avoid a growing footprint of contamination from Harshaw," Donovan said, "and that led to nine variations [of the Stage 1 plan]. It's been painstakingly long in terms of trying to solve one problem without opening up another."

From ArcelorMittal north, Stage 1 would skirt the polluted Harshaw Chemical site by slipping beneath the Harvard-Denison Bridge. It would then turn north to join Stage 2 of the trail at Steelyard Commons, a mile-long section completed in 2009.

Donovan said that information regarding Stage 3 of the Towpath Extension – a 1.9-mile section extending from Steelyard north to Literary Avenue in Tremont – would be available at the meeting. Construction of that stage is expected to start in 2015, he said.

Finally, the meeting will focus on Stage 4 of the Towpath Extension, which will extend from Literary Avenue north to Canal Basin. A portion of Stage 4, the Scranton Flats Trail, was completed earlier this year.

In addition to the preferred trail alignments, the meeting will explore land use scenarios for the Towpath greenway – conceived as far more than a 10-foot-wide asphalt path. Interpretive themes and settings will also be discussed.

At the meeting, "we're hoping we get a nod of approval [from the public] that we're still on the right track," Donovan said.