MORGANTOWN — Monongalia County and its neighbors can now begin the work to create a multicounty mountain bike trail network to boost tourism and local economies.
Governor Jim Justice signed SB 317 into law. It allows three or more adjacent counties to form a multicounty mountain biking trail network authority. More specifically, it creates the Mountaineer Trail Network Recreation Authority serving Barbour, Grant, Harrison, Marion, Mineral, Monongalia, Preston, Randolph, Taylor and Tucker counties.
“We’re extremely excited that it was approved and we’re looking forward to getting the parties together,” Mon County Commissioner Tom Bloom said Wednesday.
It should provide an enormous boon to small communities and it’s perfect for this area to attract tourism, he said.
FEOH Realty founder Jason Donahue, of Morgantown, helped push the effort and explained what’s next to make the network a reality.
He began by saying, “I’m excited that the governor signed it.”
The trail network authority will be governed by a board consisting of two members from each county that agrees to join the network; the members will be appointed by their respective commissions.
Donahue said the first step will be to organize all of the counties identified in the bill as part of the potential Mountaineer Trail Network and provide some structure to the organization.
The authority, he said, is charged with developing and operating the network and the board will seek to hire an executive director to handle the authority’s daily operations.
Developing the network will require some financial commitment from each county, Donahue said, and the authority will work to put together a financial package with the counties and the cities and visitors’ bureaus in each county.
The authority will also identify sites and property owners situated to be part of the network and negotiate easement rights with the owners. Then comes actual trail construction.
Donahue expects the preliminary stages will take about a year to 18 months, since they’ll be creating a new entity from scratch.
Several owners with suitable locations have already expressed willingness to participate, he said, so that will help decrease the negotiating period and get the trails open as soon as possible.
Donahue thanked Mon County, Morgantown and Westover for being early supporters of the concept.
Bloom credited Donahue for spearheading the project, along with former Delegate Joe Statler, R-Monongalia who sponsored the initial trail bill in 2018 and came to Charleston this past session to push the new bill.
Last year’s bill was HB 4431 and contained only the local network. It died on the last night over disagreement on some amendments.
This year, four essentially identical House bills variously sponsored by all the local delegates were introduced along with SB 317 that opened the opportunity statewide. One of the four House bills, HB 2420, was amended into SB 317 to create the local network.
Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, was one of the local sponsors. She was pleased the bill passed this time. “It’s really great that we didn’t have any glitches with it.”
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