BREWER – The city’s request to the Maine Department of Transportation for federal enhancement funds has been accepted, pending legislative approval.

The grant award of $50,000 – along with the city’s $17,170 match – will be used for a feasibility study and preliminary design for a proposed riverside recreational trail, Drew Sachs, the city’s economic development director, said this week.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with the support we’ve seen from the Maine Department of Transportation,” Sachs said. “With their help, we are going to make this project happen.”

The waterfront trail system is a key component of Brewer’s recently adopted redevelopment master plan for Penobscot Landing, the name given to the city’s targeted redevelopment area.

Among the other attractions proposed for Penobscot Landing, which runs from just north of the Penobscot River Bridge southward to the Orrington line, are a riverside recreational path, an entertainment and niche retail district, a marina and a boat launch, a children’s garden, a public market and artisan cooperative, museums, a boat-building demonstration site and a small performing arts center.

The proposed trail network will connect businesses, museums and public areas along the waterfront with the city’s residential areas, both along the Penobscot River and farther inland.

According to Sachs and other city officials, making such connections will help open up the riverfront to both pedestrians and bicyclists while helping attract visitors to Penobscot Landing.

Sachs said the city’s goal is to complete the feasibility study and design work before fall 2002, when the next round of DOT grant applications is slated to begin. In related work, the city also is gearing up to address erosion problems along the Penobscot River.

Though it is not a guarantee, having a design and cost analysis in place and right-of-way work under way will help put the city in a strong position to receive funding to build the trail in a 2004-2005 time frame, DOT bicycle-pedestrian coordinator John Balicki confirmed this week.

Balicki said that Brewer’s application was one of 19 the DOT intends to fund. He said about 40 communities submitted requests for the federal enhancement funding, which becomes available every two years.

Sachs said that the city will do what preparation it can this summer to make sure it is ready to roll when the grant money becomes available this fall. An initial step, he said, likely will be to hire a trail consultant.

According to the redevelopment plan, the city is eyeing a multiuse off-road trail that will extend north along the river shore from Harris Street to the seaplane landing in North Brewer. The city is looking at a 14-foot-wide paved trail, with a 24-space parking lot at its southern end and parking at several other points along the trail.