Beacon river trail project is still active

State: Work could be done this year

By Craig Wolf
Poughkeepsie Journal

BEACON -- Big announcements are being made often these days in Beacon, but one of them -- made four years ago this week -- has yet to have success.

It's the river trail, more than a mile of paved path that would give the city its own ''riverwalk'' linking the key sites being developed all along the waterfront.

Gov. George Pataki an-nounced the trail April 22, 1999. Though it got off to a good start, planning got bogged down in various difficulties.

Today, the project remains alive with designs made and ready to go to the Beacon planning board perhaps in May, said Denise VanBuren, spokeswoman for Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp.

The Poughkeepsie-based utility is paying for it -- $1 million -- in lieu of a fine imposed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation after it found that power plants the company owned then in Newburgh exceeded smoke density rules in 1998.

''The DEC remains committed to the project and in the next several weeks this project will go out to bid,'' said Matt Burns, a spokesman for the conservation agency. Construction is expected in the summer and could be finished by the end of the year, weather permitting, he said.

This week, a new wrinkle was thrown in. Pataki was back in town Monday to announce the Rivers and Estuaries Center on the Hudson would be based on the river at Beacon's Dennings Point.

That's where part of the trail would go.

Mayor Clara Lou Gould said the project is moving again.

''It was discovered, of course, that the million that Central Hudson had to pay wasn't going to cover it,'' she said.

The city applied to the state for $100,000 to put back in some features taken out, but it's not clear what the outcome of that was.

Design was tough, said Margery Groten of Scenic Hudson. ''There were some delays over time concerning the design because of the special features of the shoreline,'' she said.

No bridge over the rail tracks to Dia is in the current design. VanBuren said bids for the full-scale project came in at more than twice the budget.

AT A GLANCE
RIVER TRAIL ROUTE
The 10-foot-wide paved path in Beacon would start near the Metro-North Railroad station and the planned passenger ferry to Newburgh. It would parallel the tracks, crossing Scenic Hudson's Beacon Landing development on Long Dock, heading south past the Dia:Beacon art museum. It would go on to Dennings Point State Park, then bear left over the tracks on an existing bridge. Finally, it would enter Madam Brett Park, a Scenic Hudson park at the mouth of the Fishkill Creek.