Ann and Richard Lane go for a long walk every day.
The Pembroke couple venture “all over the place:” a dog park in Hooksett, Heads Pond, parts of the Northern Rail in Boscawen and even the Steeplegate Mall, back when it was open.
This time of year, with acres of sunflowers in full bloom, they’re strolling a section of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail in Concord six or seven times a week. They’re eager to see the trail extended.
“Can’t wait until they do it,” Richard said.
The Greenway Trail is envisioned to run north through downtown and up to Penacook, where it will link with the Northern Rail Trail, running continuously from Boscawen to Lebanon. Eventually, the trail would also connect through an existing section at Terrill Park, under Manchester Street and south to Pembroke, connecting there with more trails. It’s one piece of a movement to build a continuous web of bike and walking paths through the state.
Land acquisition is often the biggest hurdle to rail trail buildouts, and a nearly six-mile stretch of tracks eyed for this project has been no exception. After years of delays, the Concord City Council voted last week to move forward with purchasing a rail corridor from CSX Transportation.
While a step forward for the trail project, the vote was a setback for a local business that currently leases space on the tracks, set for removal under the sale terms. Its owner, however, isn’t ready to give up.
“I want to do everything I can to save my business,” said Gary LeBlanc, who opened the Scenic Railriders with his family in 2019. “We’ve always known that this would be a possibility, but we’ve also always known that, you know, maybe there’s a possibility for both to exist.”
The Greenway Trail plans rely on building atop the elevated corridor and narrow bridges that the tracks were built on. Under the sale agreement, the freight company selling the land, CSX Transportation, has a year to salvage any part of the tracks it’s interested in.
That’s bad news for the Scenic Railriders, which offers rides on pedaled carts that glide along the tracks. Scenic Railriders asked the city to consider a “rail with trail” option and to renegotiate the sale to allow the rails to stay.
While some city leaders expressed sympathy with LeBlanc’s situation and hope for a solution, they overwhelmingly approved the agreement nonetheless.
“They were scared,” LeBlanc said, “that they would blow up the deal, or CSX would charge them more, and they did not want to risk it. They didn’t want to risk losing the purchase at this point, because they didn’t want to delay it any longer and risk losing their grant.”
If he wanted to see a potential renegotiation, he determined he would have to do it himself.
LeBlanc has drafted an arrangement where the rails his company uses — around half the stretch for sale — would stay put and the Railriders would pay both the city and CSX to keep using them. Meanwhile, the Railriders could work with the city and Greenway Trail organizers to see if a side-by-side plan is possible. If and when the city decides it’s time for the tracks to go, CSX could remove them later at no cost to the city.
LeBlanc’s plan would buy his company time and a chance to prove his belief that a side-by-side model would work. If, in the end, the city decides that’s not doable, it has still bought him some additional time on the tracks. The alternative, LeBlanc said, is that his business will close for good this fall.
LeBlanc, who lives in Peabody, Mass., and owns a home in Conway, told the Monitor that CSX is on board with his proposal.
When asked to confirm LeBlanc’s account, CSX declined to comment.
“Even if it doesn’t work out and I have to leave, CSX has already agreed they’ll come get the rails and the ties for free,” he said. “It’s a win-win.”
Greenway Trail supporters are dubious.
There is enough land in parts of the corridor for both. In significant stretches of the corridor, however, the tracks span narrow bridges over the Merrimack River or Horseshoe pond. In other areas, land along the tracks falls away at a steep angle.
Grant funding supporting the project requires a ten-foot-wide travel lane, and widening those bridges or building up the earth beside the rails to accommodate both the tracks and the trail would be a far more expensive undertaking.
“Our concern is, what’s the cost and who’s going to pay it?” said Dick Lemieux, president of the Friends of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail. “As trustees of a nonprofit, we don’t think it’s our responsibility to pay for any additional costs that might be incurred, and as taxpayers, residents of Concord, we don’t think the city ought to pay for it either.”
Lemieux hadn’t seen LeBlanc’s plan but argued that the amount of time it would buy would be limited. He anticipates that work on the first section of trail at the northern end, which includes much of the tracks used by the railriders, will begin within a year. Before construction can begin, the group must raise $200,000 as a partial match to a $1 million federal grant.
Greenway Trail supporters have also worried that any further delays to this land deal could put them at risk of losing that grant, first awarded to them in 2021.
Their concern is well founded, according to the city.
“If we stay on the course we’re on now, we’re confident we’ll move forward with that grant funding,” said Beth Fenstermacher, the city’s director of special projects and strategic initiatives. “If it gets delayed much longer, I’m not sure.”
For now, the sale process chugs along.
When the city attempted the same purchase in 2021, the state of New Hampshire exercised its right of first refusal over the deal in the final days before its claim expired. During months of further negotiation, the rail company that owned the land at the time was bought by CSX, putting the whole deal on ice and setting the process back years.
The city is optimistic that won’t happen again. The state has been in the loop during talks with CSX, Fenstermacher said.
“We dont’ know until we know,” she said. “But we’re hopeful.”
A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation was non-committal, writing in an email to the Monitor that while the state is supportive of the city’s efforts, it would review the deal as is its right.
There was more good news for the Greenway Trail in recent days. Based on a ten-year grant allocation plan from NHDOT, the project is now likely to receive a $4.4 million federal grant that would allow it to connect its two existing paved sections – the length along the sunflower fields and the stretch in Terrill Park (see a map at the trail website here) – with a boardwalk. Wetlands in the area, at a shoulder of the Merrimack River, have previously been an obstacle to this connection.
It won’t be known for sure when this money might come through until next summer, Fenstermacher said, but they will help clear another major hurdle for the project.
It wouldn’t bother Richard Lane if the new trail went beside the tracks instead of replacing them. He wondered, though, whether it would all fit.
“It would be nice to have both, I think, if there is a way to do it,” he said. “But do they have enough right of way there to put both of them?”
As he and Ann reached the turnaround at the end of the trail near the sunflowers, they stopped and looked out into the thickets where, eventually, the boardwalk would stretch forward.