Dixon wins $2.25 million grant for bike path extension project

DIXON – The city has won a $2.25 million transportation grant for its $7.3 million bike path extension project that’s more than six years in the making.

It’s the third grant the city was awarded since 2016 through the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program and will allow the city to cover the full path expansion and add lighting and safety features.

This continues to really maximize what we can do with local dollars and shows what we’re capable of doing.”

—  Dixon Mayor Li Arellano Jr.

The project is to extend the bike path 1.6 miles, stretching east on River Road toward Raynor Garage Doors and west along the river with a ramp to the viaducts running to Seventh Street.

The viaducts would be landscaped, there would be a curved boardwalk leading up to them, and the path would include lighting and other features.

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From left, Ashleyn Zarate, 17, and Juli Vargas, 15, walk along the pedestrian path past President's Park on Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Dixon was awarded a $2.25 million state grant for a bike path extension. (Troy Taylor)

Extending pathway opportunities and outdoor quality of life improvements has been a city goal for years, and it’s even more important to increase access to transportation and recreation after the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Li Arellano Jr. said.

“This continues to really maximize what we can do with local dollars and shows what we’re capable of doing,” Arellano said.

Because the cost of the total project continued to increase during the last few years, the city had planned to postpone a section of pathway from Bunny’s Bait Shop to Raynor, but it will be able to do the entire stretch because of the grant, City Manager Danny Langloss said.

“We’ll be able to complete the entire vision,” he said. “The project in itself is transformational. It’s big for our community and goes to enhancing quality of life.”

The city won a $2 million ITEP grant in 2016 for the project and then another grant for about $1.4 million in 2021.

Grants total about $5.6 million, and the local investment will be around $1.7 million.

[ State provides millions for bike and pedestrian trails. ]

Officials held off on the work to settle years of environmental remediation needed at the former Dixon Iron and Metal scrap yard in order to open up a piece of pathway along the river. The city previously received about $4 million in environmental cleanup work from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the property.

The bike path ties into future riverfront projects and shows a variety of community benefits including quality of life as well as health and safety with the environmental cleanup and economic development opportunities, Arellano said.

“This has been a wonderful, winding roller coaster of an experience; there’s so much to it,” Arellano said. “The project continues to hit the ‘shooting for the stars’ mentality we’ve taken. It will be worth the wait.”

The project is meant to improve recreational traffic but also open a trail for those who walk or bike to work. An overall goal of the city is to keep extending the trail south to the industrial park and commercial corridors in the future. The Dixon City Council and Lee County also are pursuing a planning grant to map out a trail to Sauk Valley Community College in a separate project.

Some trees already have been removed to ready the project, and work will break ground later this month. It’s estimated to be completed by the end of the construction season in the fall.

The path and scrapyard remediation are connected to the Viaduct Point project, a partnership in which the city and the Lee County Industrial Development Association secured about 10 acres of land stretching from the Peoria Avenue Bridge to the viaducts with the goal of redeveloping the properties.

The ITEP bike path project is the third phase in the city’s riverfront master plan and will lead into the fourth phase, Project Rock, for which Dixon won a $12 million federal transportation grant to build a pedestrian bridge across the Rock River and add more trail.

The city received the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity or RAISE program grant last year after several years of applying.

Project Rock includes constructing a pedestrian bridge on the old Illinois Central Railroad piers, adding 2.8 miles of multi-use path and other improvements.