- The Brown County Board of Supervisors approved a letter to be sent to NEW Water, written by Supervisor John Van Dyck, at its meeting Wednesday night in Green Bay
- The letter requests NEW Water's "support and participation" on the County's plan to extend a trail system on the west side of the Fox River
- NEW Water holds the prized riverfront real estate between the Ashwaubomay Park and the Brown County Fairgrounds, which the County calls an "imperative piece of the trail connection"
- The Village of Ashwaubenon has had plans for a Fox River Trail West since at least 2013, while the Board of Supervisors got on board in 2019 in its Fairgrounds Master Plan
- Video shows the proposed trail site
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
The Fox River has a well-used trail system on its eastern bank, but what about the west side? I'm your Ashwaubenon neighborhood reporter Karl Winter, and the Brown County Board of Supervisors took another step to extending the existing west side trail from Ashwaubenon to De Pere.
The County Board of Supervisors approved a letter at Wednesday night's meeting — a letter to NEW Water, to request they get on board with the trail project.
Currently, NEW Water has this barbed wire fence along the riverfront, between Ashwaubomay Lake and the Brown County Fairgrounds. Brown County needs NEW Water's support and cooperation to figure out if it can navigate through or around that fence.
"Once we determine the feasibility of it, then it could move on to the next phase of actually planning that trail and permitting and things like that," said Brown County Parks Director Matt Kriese.
The future trail could go along the river around Ashwaubomay Lake, and eventually connect both sides of the Fox, Kriese says.
"We'd like to see that paved, to create a loop on the west side," Kriese said. "And ultimately, then it would come back up to a pedestrian lane on Fort Howard, come back around Claude Allouez, and hook up with the Fox River Trail East."
Kriese says the county and local cities are behind this plan because the river trail on the river's East side shows that if you build it, they will come.
"Having another trail on the other side may provide people that are living on the west side equal opportunity to have access to those trails," Kriese said.
Kriese says the feasibility study would likely be done in 2024 — so a plan that's been in the works since 2019 will have to wait at least another year before construction can begin.
