Town of Lansing receives $50,000 for trails plan, considers railway trail

The town of Lansing is getting the ball rolling on its Comprehensive Trails Plan.

The town board recently received a $50,000 grant from the Park Foundation to further its Comprehensive Trails Plan. The grant application was submitted on July 16. 

“[The grant’s funds] are over a two-year period,” said Town Supervisor Ruth Groff at the Sept. 18 town board meeting. 

The town received a payment of $15,000 on Sept. 30 and will receive the remaining $35,000 on Sept. 30 next year. Grant reports to the Park Foundation are expected on Aug. 31, 2025 and Sept. 30, 2026.

An advisory board of residents created a Comprehensive Trails Plan in 2022, where they laid out a vision for the future of the town’s trails and parks. It also features individual recommendations for each of the town’s five parks and its main trail. 

The process of achieving the master plan focused around the following three themes: rethink, reconnect and refocus. The themes represent the following: 

• Rethink: The physical space and programming opportunities
• Reconnect: Physically within the parks, visually to the waterfront, programmatically for the community 
• Refocus: Activities within each park to maximize the space and focus on the pedestrian realm

Iterating on the trails plan could help the town secure funding for its “greenway” project. 

The project, town officials have said, will connect some of the staples of family life in the town, as well as encourage residents to enjoy the town’s scenic nature views.

The trail would be located away from major roadways to encourage residents of all ages to safely navigate largely rural Lansing. The “greenway” would also encourage residents to bike and walk along the trail on their way to landmarks like the town’s center, the Lansing Central School District campus and Myers Park and Salt Point.

Outside of the town’s main landmarks, the currently proposed plan would also eventually connect to The Rink on East Shore Road and the Edwards Lake Cliffs Preserve, eventually connecting with the village of Lansing and the YMCA on Graham Road. 

The trail would have 10-foot-wide lanes paved with asphalt or stone dust, as well as a mulch shoulder, and would serve any non-motorized method of transportation.

Town officials have referenced the main multi-use trails in the city of Geneva as a potential example of what the greenway could look like.

At the Sept. 18 meeting, the town board also approved a resolution expressing interest in the future of the portion of land off the railroad right-of-way that runs through the town of Lansing in the event of decommissioning by owner Norfolk Southern Railway.

The majority of Cayuga Lake shoreline in the Town of Lansing is owned or controlled by Norfolk Southern, and some of the portions in the railway are no longer in use, leading to uncertainty about the future of the railroad right-of-way, according to the resolution.

“The Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) is tasked with providing guidance to the town board on potential conservation opportunities, and the CAC has identified the railway right-of-way as an important conservation opportunity,” the resolution states. 

The open sale of this property could lead to many negative outcomes, including exclusion of the use of the publicly owned lake and nearby area.

“This isn’t binding us in any way. It isn’t binding the railroad,” town board member Judy Drake said of the resolution. “It is just a ‘Hey, we are interested, let us know.’”

Groff said a potential decommission could be at least a decade away. 

“We don’t know when it is going to happen,” she noted.

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com. Contact Eddie Velazquez at edvel37@gmail.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @ezvelazquez.

In brief:

The Johnson Museum of Art is hosting a Repousse Metalworking workshop for third and fourth graders at the Lansing Community Library on Oct. 22. The workshop runs from 3:30 to 5 p.m. 

“From snarling jaguars to patterned frogs, PreColumbian artists created a vivid bestiary in gold. Inspired by ancient examples and guided by staff from the Johnson Museum of Art, participants will create their own metalwork designs,” reads a notice on the library website.

Registration can be found here: https://lansinglibrary.org/2024/09/25/repousse-metalworking-with-the-johnson-museum-of-art-for-3rd-4th-graders/.