Park district gets moving on Green Bay Trail improvements

Winnetka park commissioners got a glimpse of what a renovated Green Bay Road Trail could look like during their Committee of the Whole meeting on Nov. 2.

A presentation from the Lakota Group provided an update on a project to upgrade the trail and its surroundings in Winnetka.

Around since in the 1960s, the Green Bay Road Trail is a multi-use pedestrian path that runs nine miles along the Metra railway from Highland Park to Wilmette. About 2 1/4 miles of the trail runs through Winnetka.

The trail is maintained by numerous entities as well as community groups — the most notable of which is the Friends of the Green Bay Trail. The nonprofit has raised more than half of a million dollars since 2010 to improve portions of the trail, primarily in Glencoe.

Improvements to the Winnetka portion of the trail would be in coordination with the Village of Winnetka and could include overhauling the vegetation overhaul, widening and evening the trail to a consistent 8 feet, marking the trail, adding signage, improving drainage and maintaining the gravel running path.

The proposals are based on feedback from the community gathered from a pop-up workshop along the trail and three online surveys, in which close to 400 users participated, according to Lakota.

Lakota projects the cost of the entire project to be $7.29 million — more than $3 million of that going toward landscaping and vegetation.

The proposal still needs multiple levels of review, but commissioners expressed their early support for the project.

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