Kwame completes work on $3.2M St. Vincent Greenway Trail

A new $3.2 million section of trail in the St. Vincent Greenway opened to the public with a ribbon cutting on October 20. Kwame Building Group provided construction management services on the 1.3-mile project, which connects trail sections within the seven-mile greenway from North St. Louis County to Forest Park.

The project is part of Great Rivers Greenway’s River Ring, a series of greenways and trails that connect the St. Louis region with transportation and recreation alternatives.

Kwame, a minority business enterprise based in St. Louis, provided design review, construction packaging, bid process management, schedule management, construction oversight, project management and oversight of multiple contractors on the project.

The 10-foot-wide multi-use trail passes through the heart of Ruth Porter Park, a nine-block linear urban park, connecting several communities and providing a recreation resource and alternative to vehicular travel. The paved trail is concrete from Skinker and Etzel to Porter Park, and asphalt with concrete curbs within Porter Park.

As part of its mission to make St. Louis a better place to live, Great Rivers Greenway, along with Kwame and their project partners, added amenities along the greenway trail to improve the user experience and safety. 

At Porter Park, the goals were to increase community access, improve visibility throughout the park and enhance the sense of safety. Curbs were removed from bisecting alleys and streets, making rolling through the park by bicycle, rollerblade and wheelchair feasible for the first time. More than 25 hills were graded to gentle slopes and large wooden trellises were removed to improve visibility and safety. 

The project also included landscaping, lighting, sculptures by local artists, interpretive and directional signage, bicycle racks, a water feature and colored-pavement plazas with plantings to give Ruth Porter Park a botanical garden ambiance. 

Four neighborhood youth learned welding skills to fabricate bright green benches and trash receptacles through a project led by the Creative Exchange Lab. Unused structures were recycled as bases for the art, while an existing stage and plaza at the north end was left in place, with new trees to form a backdrop.

Construction of the next trail segment from Delmar to Forest Park will begin in early 2013, in conjunction with construction of the Delmar Loop Trolley. Work on the garden, park and trail continuation in Wellston on the west end also will begin in 2013.

CH2M Hill was the architect. Contractors included Gershenson Construction, Kozeny-Wagner Inc., Meyer Electric, Ideal Landscape and Infrastructure Management.