Mike Brooks and other members of the Lake Links Association have been working since 2017 to create a 10-mile walking and biking trail around White Bear Lake.

On Saturday, association members will celebrate the group’s progress with a “Ride Around the Lake,” a free guided bike ride that will start and end at the Saputo Station rest stop in Bellaire Beach Park in White Bear Township.

About 80 percent of the trail is in place; the remaining connections are expected to be made in the next few years, said Brooks, founding member of the association and its chairman. Officials of the White Bear Lake-area nonprofit organization have lobbied for the trail system at all levels of government “because the route – in order to circumnavigate the lake – must connect through five lakeside communities and two counties,” Brooks said.

The most recent addition to the trail was the completion this summer of a segment along South Shore Boulevard, which passes through White Bear Lake and White Bear Township. In 2018, Ramsey County got $2.6 million from the state to complete the segment, Brooks said.

A large percentage of South Shore Boulevard, from McKnight to County Road F, went from a two-lane county roadway “that was all busted up and didn’t have much of a shoulder” to a one-way road with parking areas and a 10-foot wide shared-use trail along the lake side, Brooks said.

“It totally changed the neighborhood,” he said. “People weren’t out on it before. Now, people are out all the time. It has just transformed the neighborhood. You’d be amazed at how the neighborhood has such a wonderfully slow feel to it. The speed of people.”

Minnesota 96 corridor

Two sections of the trail – one on the north side of the lake along Minnesota 96 and the other heading south from 96 in the Minnesota 244 corridor through Dellwood – remain to be implemented, he said.

Brooks said he hopes the solution for the roughly ¾-mile segment in Ramsey County along Highway 96 will be part of a Highway 96 Corridor Study launched this summer by Washington County Public Works officials. Washington and Ramsey counties, in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Transportation, are leading the study, which covers a 10-plus-mile stretch of the highway from U.S. 61 in White Bear Lake to Minnesota 95 in Stillwater.

The study will specifically consider safety improvements, pedestrian and bicycle needs and general condition of the pavement, guardrails and culverts, said Madeline Dahlheimer, a senior planner for Washington County.

The county will be engaging with property owners, neighbors and businesses along the route as part of the study, which is expected to conclude next summer. The first public open house on the project will be 4-6 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Gasthaus Bavarian Hunter in Grant.

“It’s a balancing act,” Dahlheimer said. “We would love to get a trail in there, but there are property impacts to consider, technical challenges, costs implications and other needs to be balanced with implementation of a trail.”

The entire Minnesota 96 corridor is “pretty tight,” Dahlheimer said. “That’s one of the challenges of the study, people can’t really walk or bike safely there. We need to find balance between what will support safety along the corridor, what can be supported by the community, and preserving the unique character of Highway 96.”

Local costs a concern

Plastic road markers separate vehicle traffic from bicyclists on the undeveloped shoulders of Highway 96 on the north side of White Bear Lake on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. Members of the Lake Links Association, a White Bear Lake-area nonprofit organization, have been working since 2017 to create a 10-mile walking and biking trail around White Bear Lake — about 80 percent of the trail is in place. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Dellwood officials have launched their own study of possible alignments for the 1.5-mile portion of the Lake Links trail in their community. Possible routes would be adjacent to or within the portion of Minnesota 244 in Dellwood, Brooks said.

The city received a $2.6 million grant from the Minnesota Legislature in 2020 to plan and implement the Minnesota 244 segment. In 2023 the state granted an additional $2 million to offset additional costs anticipated by city officials, he said.

But Dellwood City Administrator/City Clerk Joel Holstad said Wednesday that the cost to build the trail through the city could reach as much as $4.7 million, and the city would have to make up the $100,000 difference.

“The city of Dellwood simply cannot do that,” he said. “The real problem is that the city of Dellwood, if it accepts the grant money from the state, is obligated to pay to complete the trail.”

Dellwood would need to partner with another agency like Washington County or receive additional funding from the state during the next legislative session to make that happen, he said.

The initial grant the city received “has a timing component to it that we don’t believe we can meet,” Holstad said. “We are working to resolve those issues, but there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to be optimistic at this moment that the existing $4.6 million is going to be able to take care of the trail.”

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The city cannot be asked to “solely bear the entire cost of the trail construction, as well as permanent long-term maintenance,” he continued. “We’re a city of only about 1,000 people, and most of them are not trail users.”

In fact, the $2 million supplemental grant in the last legislative session “came as a surprise to us,” Holstad said, adding that Lake Links Association officials applied for the grant without apprising city officials.

“We did not request it,” he said. “We did not know about it until after it was awarded to us. The Lake Links Association didn’t even bother to ask the city of Dellwood if they would be able to use the funds to complete the trail. They just did it on their own.”

City officials have been exploring trail options for almost 50 years, he said, and have “not found a way to resolve the many obstacles that exist – although the council is interested in providing for a safe trail passage if it can be accommodated within the right of way, and if the city isn’t expected to pay for it.”

Seeking solutions

Brooks, however, remains optimistic that the trail project will one day be competed.

“Those are the last two sections, and then the project is done,” Brooks said. “We’re waiting on (Dellwood and Washington County) to get their studies done. I have every reason to believe that this will get done because both Ramsey and Washington (counties) and Dellwood are behind this project. Solutions to complete each of them are being actively pursued.”

Brooks, who now lives in Silver Cliff, Wis., continues to work on the trail plan as a way to honor his friend Steve Wolgamot, who died in 2022 of complications related to glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer.

“He called me and said, ‘I know you’ve moved, but you can’t leave. We need the continuity,’” Brooks said. “I’m in now until the end.”

Wolgamot “believed in working for the collective good,” Brooks said. “He was all about the idea that every individual can make a difference and, collectively, we can make a huge difference.”

In an interview posted on the Lake Links Association website before he died, Wolgamot talked about the need for a safe trail system.

“For the very young and the very old, the ability to move around without a car … is a really important thing,” Wolgamott said. “For children, it’s how they establish their independence. For seniors like me, it’s a significant way we preserve and extend our independence. If we as a society don’t make it possible for people to move around, I don’t think we’ve done our job well.”

The ride on Saturday is a way for people to celebrate the sections that have been “newly completed or newly enhanced,” Brooks said.

“But we also ride in the areas that still need to be completed,” he said. “We experience the uncompleted sections so we can see why it needs to be done – how unsafe it feels, just how it feels. It’s that visceral experience. We ask people, ‘What did you like? What didn’t you like?’ It just keeps it fresh in people’s minds, and they rally communities to work harder. They’ll encourage us and say, ‘You really need to get this done.’”

Ride Around the Lake

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Lake Links Association’s seventh annual Ride Around the Lake, a 10-mile ride around White Bear Lake, will be Saturday. The guided recreational bike ride will start and end at the Saputo Station rest stop in Bellaire Beach Park, 2500 South Shore Blvd., White Bear Township. Check-in will start at 8 a.m., and the first group will leave at 8:30 a.m. Subsequent groups will depart every 10 minutes.

Anyone 12 and up is welcome to participate; children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult. All riders must wear a helmet. The first 75 individuals to register and ride will receive a free Lake Links water bottle.

For more information and to register, go to lakelinks.net/ride.