The second phase of the Mississippi River Walk and construction of the Red House Interpretive Center will be paid for with nearly $400,000 in federal transportation enhancement funds awarded this week to Cape Girardeau.

The funds administered by the Missouri Department of Transportation amount to $320,323 for phase 2 of the River Walk project. It will consist of a 12-foot-wide concrete walkway inside the Mississippi River floodwall from the Themis Street platform north 500 feet to a fueling station for small boats. The money also will pay to light both the second and first phase of the walk.

Phase 1, currently being designed, will extend from the Themis Street platform south 1,000 feet. It will include a sidewalk outside the floodwall that will run past the planned location of the Red House and continue to Morgan Oak Street.

The Red House, a vertical 40-by-20-foot log cabin that will resemble the house Cape Girardeau founder Don Louis Lorimier used as a trading post, received $77,972 in federal funding. The money will be used to build the house at a site northeast of Old St. Vincent's Church in downtown Cape Girardeau. A $15,000 grant received two weeks ago from the Missouri Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission will pay for interior furnishings.

This fall, members of a committee formed to build the Red House hope to break ground on the project, pour a concrete slab for the foundation and begin building the two chimneys.

"Having the almost $78,000 assures it's going to happen," said Jane Jackson, a member of the Lewis and Clark committee.

The construction schedule calls for the house to be completed by the end of summer 2002. The interior will be finished and furnished during fall 2002 and spring 2003.

Community members are invited to help with construction, Jackson said. Groups or individuals who want to volunteer can contact Steve Strom at 334-2917.

A re-enactment is planned Nov. 23, 2003, exactly 200 years after Lewis and Clark stopped in Cape Girardeau.

Construction on the first phase of the River Walk, which received $338,656 in federal transportation funds in January, was expected to start this fall. But Martha Brown, a technical assistant in the city's Planning and Zoning Department, said coordinating the designs with the Army Corps of Engineers is taking longer than expected.

"We're hoping for next year now," she said.

She said both phases of the project now probably will be built at the same time, with lighting added later.

The city's contribution to the two phases of the River Walk project is $164,000. Its contribution to the Red House is $19,493.

No more phases of the River Walk have been planned. But Brown said the city eventually wants to extend the River Walk south to connect with Southeast Missouri State University's proposed River Campus by going across the railroad tracks and extending it north to Sloan Creek. The goal is to connect with the existing Cape LaCroix hiking/biking trail to form a loop.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182