Medical Mile, other trails draw symposium to LR
Posted on Monday, November 17, 2008
When people raising money for the downtown leg of the Arkansas River Trail approached Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield more than four years ago, the fundraisers suggested that the company sponsor a set of light poles that would have banners bearing the insurance company’s name.
“That didn’t excite us too much,” recalled Patrick O’Sullivan, a company vice president.
Working with the fundraisers, the company came up with a different idea — a set of 10 educational panels placed along the trail offering health tips — that became the trail’s “wellness walkway.” That idea “kind of put us over the top,” O’Sullivan said, and the company kicked in $ 250, 000 toward the $ 2. 1 million project.
O’Sullivan and others described the origins of the trail’s Medical Mile, which also includes a promenade, plaza and 1, 300-foot wall with artistic displays on health-related topics, for an audience of about 600 trail enthusiasts in Little Rock on Sunday during the keynote luncheon of American Trails ’ National Trail Symposium.
The symposium brings together government officials, advocates and others once every two years to talk about challenges in building and protecting trails.
The Medical Mile, along with the Big Dam Bridge and the stillunfinished River Trail, attracted organizers of the week-long event to Little Rock, American Trails’ Chairman Bob Searns said. Based in Redding, Calif., the organization promotes creating a network of trails across the country.
“There’s 600 people here from around the country and as far away as Korea who are very interested in what’s being done here,” Searns said.
Completed in 2006, the Medical Mile also drew contributions of $ 250, 000 from St. Vincent Health System and property manager John Bailey. Heart Clinic Arkansas led the fundraising effort and contributed $ 35, 000.
The project has attracted attention because of the connection it draws between health and trails, said Terry Eastin of Fayetteville, who worked as a consultant on project.
“How many people do you know who would get up and argue with their physician when he says this is good for you,” Eastin said. “Having the medical community behind this project opened doors that people in the political community could have never reached.”
That connection was the theme of Sunday’s luncheon. Richard Jackson, a professor of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that a lack of places for people to walk or ride bicycles has contributed to the country’s rising obesity rates.
“We have engineered exercise out of our lives,” Jackson said.
He told the people gathered in the Statehouse Convention Center that “you are health leaders, and the work that you do easily rivals the work of the cardiologists.”
The River Trail stretches from the pedestrian bridge over Murray Lock and Dam to downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock. The William J. Clinton Foundation is raising money to close the 14-mile loop on the eastern side by renovating the Rock Island Railroad bridge and opening it to pedestrians.
Little Rock officials are also trying to close a gap from the Baring Cross railroad bridge to the Junior Deputy baseball field.
Eastin said that leg of the trail has been stalled because of concerns by private landowners. Union Pacific Railroad says having the trail run along its tracks would pose hazards to bicyclists and joggers. Episcopal Collegiate School opposes having the trail cross its property, and that route would also pose construction challenges because of the terrain, Eastin said.
She said the city is working with property owners and hopes to announce a route soon.
Despite laws giving them protection against lawsuits, private landowners are often worried about having a trail cross their property, Fran Wallas, an attorney for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said during a session of the symposium Sunday morning.
Most states have laws providing property owners immunity from lawsuits over accidents on trails except in cases of “gross negligence,” she said. Arkansas’ law provides protection except in cases of “malicious... failure to guard or warn against an ultra-hazardous condition.”
To alleviate owners’ concerns, Wallas suggested creating an insurance pool to pay attorney’s fees or asking attorneys to volunteer their services to defend any landowners who are sued. Trail builders can also offer incentives, such as naming a section of the trail for the landowner, she said.
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