More paved bike lanes coming to Enterprise South Nature Park

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – Chattanooga’s Enterprise South Nature Park will be making improvements, thanks to an anonymous donor.

Hamilton county leaders first heard about the contribution at last week’s meeting.

Ashley Henderson has the story.

Hamilton County General Services Administrator Lee Norris explained to the County Commission last Wednesday, that an anonymous donor wanted to help improve the facilities at Enterprise South with an 850,000 thousand dollar donation.

The donor enjoys riding bicycles in the 2800 acre park, but wanted more options for riding on the paved road and not the mountain bike trails. The outer perimeter road is 5 miles long, and for motorized vehicles only.

Lee Norris is the Hamilton County Administrator of General Services.

“We came up with a decision to build a bike lane on Still Hollow Road out there. That way, this individual has a way to ride his bicycle along with other patrons of the park, yet ride on the roads and not on the mountain bike trails.”

Commissioner Randy Fairbanks said he hoped to be able to use part of the donation for other things.

“I was just curious if there would be any money from this to be able to do anything in the future, but – this is going to be a eight hundred and fifty thousand dollar bike lane. Correct? That’s correct commissioner. Like I said we had ongoing conversations with the donor, and  this was the most logical and best use of the donation.”

Commissioner Tim Boyd wondered if there might be a possibility that more money might be needed later to finish the project.

“Did you get contractor bids on this and that’s a solid number and nobody’s going to come back to us for additional funds cause we couldn’t finish it?”

“Determined what the reasonable cost would be, added a figure to that to cover incidentals and unexpected – contingency? Yeah, contingency, so – so you’re confident you’re not going to come back to us and say your seventy five percent finished . . .  commissioner, I would reduce the scope before I did that. Ok.”

Chris Woods from Montgomery, Ala was riding the trails just today. He likes the idea.

“Oh I think it’s fantastic, it’s great to get, or have places for road bikers that are, they don’t have to have a lot of interaction with vehicles, because there’s a lot of people out there that are distracted by their phones.”

In Chattanooga, Ashley Henderson, News 12 now.