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Market Spotlight A Path for Duv-All: Jacksonville's Emerald Trail Connecting Downtown, Communities
By Thomas Ehlers, Staff Writer
Home to more than a million people, Jacksonville is Florida’s most populated city, while its nearly 840 square miles of land represent the largest city by area in the contiguous United States.
The city that gained the fourth-most population in America from 2022 to 2023 earned the moniker “Bold New City of the South,” and one Jacksonvillebased organization is helping connect a number of neighborhoods to the city’s center, bringing lifetime residents and new arrivals together through one bold, new path system.
Groundwork Jacksonville, a Jacksonville-based nonprofit organization, is undergoing an ambitious project to construct the Emerald Trail, 30 to 34 miles of trails and segments that will connect Jacksonville communities with the city’s 24-square-mile urban core.
The organization was formed a decade ago by the City of Jacksonville, partnering with Groundwork USA, a national network of nonprofit organizations seeking to create healthy, green, just and resilient communities. With support of the U.S. National Park Service and Environmental Protection Agency, Groundwork Jacksonville’s efforts also include restoration to Jacksonville tributaries McCoys Creek and Hogans Creek.
“We took what was a decades-long vision of a linear park around downtown, and blew it up much bigger than that,” said Groundwork Jacksonville CEO and President Kay Ehas.
Paving The Way
Groundwork Jacksonville worked with the Path Foundation, an Atlanta-based firm specializing in trail infrastructure design, to develop a master plan to guide the project. Leaning on the Path Foundation’s more than 25 years of experience, the master plan set out to accomplish a central goal: to provide a safe, enjoyable, convenient and attractive trail system for everyone in the City of Jacksonville.
Completed in 2019 and revised in 2021, the master plan laid out a steering committee, and it identified a multi-use greenway trail type as the preferred method of delivery. The project would also feature shared-use streets, shared-use side paths, green alleys, raised cycle tracks and neighborhood greenway trail types in some sections.
After approval, the organization started the planning and execution of two phases, but the process underwent rapid change in the past six months.
In March, Groundwork Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) were awarded $147 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)’s Neighborhood Access and Equity Program Grant. All of these funds will go towards the project, which received more than $36 million in supplementary funds from the Local Option Gas Tax and additional private funding.
Less than 20% of the 686 cities that applied actually received grant funding, and Jacksonville’s $147 million was the sixth-highest grant given across the country.
These funds will lead to the creation of five segments totalling 15 miles of trail. In partnership with JTA and the City of Jacksonville, Groundwork Jacksonville will complete the design and construction of the Southwest Connector, S-Line Connector, Westside Connector, Northwest Connector and Eastside Connector segments.
“This historic grant affirms that officials at the highest level of government believe in this project,” said Nat Ford, CEO of JTA. “They believe in the city of Jacksonville, its leadership, its future and our ability to deliver major projects.”
While the funds were a tremendous boost to the project, they did present a timing challenge. The USDOT grant runs for six-and-a-half years, cutting the original timeline by more than a third. Ehas and her organization want to ensure the best product, and this fast-tracked project is still testing the best way to implement new funds.
“That’s where it’s going to be challenging — to design and construct five trail segments in that timeline without sacrificing community engagement.” Ehas said. “We are figuring out the best delivery method. We are still exploring that.”
A Path for All
When the Emerald Trail is complete, its more than 30 miles of trail will connect at least 14 historic neighborhoods to downtown, Hogans Creek, McCoys Creek and the St. Johns River. The trail will link to two colleges, three hospitals, 16 schools and the area’s Regional Transportation Center, while 13 additional schools and 17 parks will be located less than three blocks from the trail.
With these new connections come new opportunities to profit, and Groundwork Jacksonville is utilizing a home repair project to ensure residents stay in their homes and outside buyers don’t try to buy up properties for cheap on the trail. It secured a $1.2 million grant from the United Way and Groundwork USA and hopes to secure additional funds in the future.
Many of the homes in Jacksonville’s urban core neighborhoods weren’t built to withstand the effects of climate change, and citizens in the North Riverside, Mixon Town and Lackawanna communities can receive new cool roofs, repair or replacement of walls, windows and doors, or other services. These efforts are part of the organization’s larger community revitalization plan, which is under development.
“Our mission, our vision is that long-term residents remain and prosper,” Ehas said. “If you look at the urban core, there is a lot of vacant land and abandoned buildings that you can bring in new residents that economically diversify the neighborhood without wholesale displacement — if you are intentional about it. We believe that residents should be architects of their neighborhood revitalizations.”
Groundwork Jacksonville held specific community meetings, attended other events, visited places of worship and worked with community development corporations to engage the community through the design process, an effort that continues. The Lavilla Link, a segment that opened in May, was added through community engagement, as members of the Durkeeville and Newtown neighborhoods wanted a direct connection to downtown.
Some of the connected communities are lowerincome, minority neighborhoods that have been overlooked by the city and its plans, while others had developed a sense of mistrust from the government that Groundwork Jacksonville is trying to earn back with its programs.
“It’s one of the biggest goals of this grant –reconnecting neighborhoods that were cut off by transportation infrastructure decisions implemented years ago,” Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said at a May press conference. “Schools, jobs, medical offices, places of worship – they’ll soon be more accessible for those neighborhoods that have been left behind.
“It’s one of the ways we’re making good on the broken promises of consolidation.”
The 1.3-mile LaVilla Link connects Brooklyn to the S-Line Rail Trail through the historic LaVilla neighborhood. It serves as the “Model Project,” allowing residents near the trail and throughout the region to envision what the Emerald Trail system will offer once complete.
Accessibility is an important piece of the Emerald Trail. One in four residents living in Jacksonville’s urban core does not have access to a vehicle, according to Ehas. The completed project would connect these citizens to 30 square miles of the city.
Additionally, for every dollar spent on trails, direct medical costs decrease by three dollars, Ehas said. Some of the urban core hosts the city’s least healthy areas, and once completed, these residents will have direct access to recreation and trail segments.
Property values on the trail are expected to increase by 6% on average, and with increased foot traffic and eyes around the trail, safety increases, too.
“Our vision is that the urban core is this vibrant place where everyone wants to live,” Ehas said. “Trails have been proven to add economic impact, and we’ve already seen that.”
One question Groundwork Jacksonville found an answer to came with the upkeep of the new trail segments. Jacksonville’s recreation department services the largest square mileage in the country. Through a series of partnerships, Groundwork Jacksonville created the Emerald Trail Stewards program, which will train and employ people from the neighborhoods to landscape and keep up the trails.
What started as a decades-old dream, the Emerald Trail is paving a way for new opportunities across Jacksonville. From citizens to Stewards to local government, Groundwork Jacksonville has been pleased with the buy-in from stakeholders in all forms.
“It’s pretty amazing how everyone has been really, really cooperative,” Ehas said. “Most people understand this is a transformational project.”
