$50 Million State Investment Pushes Great Redwood Trail Forward, Promising Economic Boost for Humboldt

Great Redwood Trail Agency Executive Director Elaine Hogan

With $50 million of funding from the state’s Prop. 4 bond measure, the Great Redwood Trail Agency is moving forward on a project that it says will clean up an environmental mess and generate $100 million a year in economic benefits.

About $48 million of the gain is predicted for Humboldt County.

Graphic breaking down economic benefits by county

Elaine Hogan, the agency’s executive director, outlined the current status of the Great Redwood Trail project and its future steps during a July 1 online presentation to the Community Economic Resilience Consortium.

The agency is managing 231 miles of the 307-mile trail project and released a master plan on the last March after an extensive series of meetings and surveys. Hogan described the trail as a “multi-generational project” but 60 miles of it are already open to the public, including 20 miles in the northern segment including Humboldt County.

And she said the trail, which spans from the San Francisco Bay area to Humboldt Bay, will spur “economic revitalization of small rural communities,” which Hogan described as a “key component of the project.”

The multi-million dollar annual economic return is expected to be seen in many forms.

“People will come from far and wide and even locally, especially to use the trail on a daily basis,” Hogan said. “There are a variety of businesses and amenities that can cater to trail users and benefit our local economy.”

The master plan breaks down the annual economic gains into categories, with 60 percent of it in tourism and retail, 37 percent of it in “health and mortality” and three percent in “transportation and emissions benefits.”

Sales taxes and hotel bed taxes are expected to bring in $5.49 million a year to local, regional and state jurisdictions.

That’s all related to a forecasted trail use demand of 6.2 million to 9.2 million annual user trips in the three-county stretch managed by the agency.

“Once the trail is complete, it’s going to link 29 towns across three counties with trail access and bring economic opportunities to those regions, many of which used to be much larger and much more vibrant when the railroad was running and have kind of been bypassed with the highway,” said Hogan.

Much of the agency’s 231-mile section of the trail corridor from Willits north is established through a process known as railbanking, where unused rail lines are allowed to be converted to other uses.

The remains of the former rail line blight the environment and Hogan said the trail is “basically a clean-up project.”

She added, “Environmental enhancement is actually built into our enabling legislation, things like restoring fish passage to the rivers.”

Over 100 miles of the trail skirt the Russian and Eel rivers and restoration and fish passage work will be done “in a variety of ways, many of which are forthcoming because we are just getting going now that we’ve adopted our master plan,” Hogan said.

Most of the 20 miles of existing trail in the northern segment is from Arcata to Eureka, and more is in the works.

Annie and Mary Trail Segment

The Annie and Mary Connectivity Project from the Arcata skateboard park to the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District pump station on West End Road is under construction, and the segment from Eureka to College of the Redwoods is in a planning stage.

Also planned is a segment in the Alderpoint area starting at the former Alderpoint train depot. It’s under another form of funding, “community-led” planning grants.

“This was really built out of grassroots,” said Hogan. “A local family came to one of our master plan meetings a couple of years ago and said, ‘Hey, this sounds really cool – cannabis is declining, we want our kids to stay on the land, we want to have opportunities here, we really see an opportunity in this project and we want to help shape what that looks like.’”

She added, “They have been a really key part out there.”

So far the existing northern segments have been developed by municipalities but the agency is at the point where it can begin to take on trail development.

Its budget for the year that began July 1 is $13.3 million. “This is really the first time that the agency has had money for trail development,” Hogan said.

In addition to grant allocations like the one from the bond measure, the agency’s operations funding is coming from right-of-ways licensing and leasing revenue.

But “competitive grant funding from multiple sources is also going to be and continue to be a larger part of how we fund this project and the agency,” Hogan said.

Development of the trail segment managed by the agency is estimated at $1 billion to $5 billion. Removing decaying rail infrastructure from the Eel River area will be a significant expense.

Describing it as “a daunting task,” Gregg Foster of the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission, the meeting’s host, said the agency will need “some hubris, some hope and some smart work” to do it.

“Just from what I know of living in Humboldt County over these last 25 years or so, we get stuff done,” Hogan said. “We’re independent, we’re a little scrappy and people have equipment out in the hills and have a lot of ideas about how to get those train cars out of the river.”

Railbanking allows re-conversion if a rail project emerges in the future but a broad assumption is that rail service won’t return to the corridor used by the trail.

Asked whether there’s opposition to trail development, Hogan said there are two options for use of the corridor.

“You have a dilapidated rail corridor that sat there unused for almost 30 years – we could try to bring a train back if people think that’s a good idea.” Hogan said.

“God, please don’t,” Foster said with laughter.

“Or we can clean up the mess and we can get a walking and biking trail and start economic development and restoration – those are the options on this property,” Hogan continued.