CITY GETS STATE FUNDING FOR RIVER WALK PROJECT

The city of Cape Girardeau will use $338,656 in Missouri Department of Transportation money to expand Riverfront Park.

The city will chip in more than $84,000 as its share of the cost of the project.

A 12-foot-wide concrete walkway will be constructed from the Riverfront Park Themis Street platform south about 1,000 feet along the east side of the Mississippi River floodwall to an area where a section of the old Frisco Railroad levee still stands.

Most of the railroad levee, completed in 1916, was torn down when the Cape Girardeau floodwall was built. Construction of the floodwall began in 1956 and was finished in 1964.

The new riverfront project will involve more than a hiking/biking path.

"We are going to put in some step seating and a turnaround at the south end," said City Planner Kent Bratton. The improvements will provide space for bicyclists to turn around and head back north to the existing Riverfront Park area at the Themis and Broadway floodgates.

Bratton said state funding is just the first step in moving ahead with the project. "We have a lot of paperwork we have to get through first," he said. "We have all kinds of environmental things to contend with here."

The city must secure approval from the Corps of Engineers before it can proceed with any construction work on the river side of the floodwall, Bratton said.

Construction likely won't get under way until this fall at the earliest, he said.

Bratton said the project is the first step in efforts to expand Riverfront Park. City officials hope to extend the pedestrian route to old St. Vincent's Seminary, a former Catholic school that Southeast Missouri State University plans to develop into a school for the visual and performing arts. The site overlooks the Mississippi River.

Mayor Al Spradling III said the project should benefit the community.

"Frankly, one of our main assets is the river," he said. "I think anytime you have the ability to enhance that asset, to make it more usable and promote the river or surrounding areas, you need to take that opportunity."

Cape Girardeau's Riverfront Park opened in 1984.