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Denny Spinner
This is Denny Spinner from the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement. Welcome to Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers and recording today from the Radius Indiana office in Bedford, Indiana. Joining us today is Jeff Quyle, the president and CEO of Radius Indiana, and Layne Elliott and Kristy Anderson from the Eppley Center at Indiana University. Welcome to the podcast Jeff, Layne, and Kristy. Glad to have you here.
Jeff Quyle
Glad to be here.
Layne Elliot
Thanks for having us.
Kristy Anderson
Thank you.
Danny Spinner
Jeff, you and I have worked together throughout our careers on a number of things, but I think you know, one of the big projects that has been part of your life for the last couple of years is the Monon South Trail. Now, to those of us who are in southern Indiana, the Monon Trail is something. You go, okay, yeah, we kind of get an idea. But for those who, if you were going to introduce someone to what the Monon South Trail is, what's your sales pitch?
Jeff Quyle
The Monon South Trail will become the longest continuous rails-and-trails project in the state of Indiana when we finish our construction on the project. It is a byproduct, you know, it is a result of the old Monon rail line, which was such an integral part of the identity of the state of Indiana for decades in the 19th and 20th centuries, before railroads went by the wayside.
This corridor is 62.4 miles of former rail corridor that's being converted into a trail stretching through five counties. Eight different communities are going to be connected together through this. It's bringing small towns that have been ebbing for decades, in some cases, it's bringing them a new force of vitality, a new chance to grow a place where their residents can enjoy themselves and feel some pride in what the community is doing.
Denny Spinner
So where are the start and end points to kind of give us a geographic feel of where we're going to be? If we hit the trail head at the north end, where would we go to the south?
Jeff Quyle
If you started at the north end of this section of the Monon South Trail, you'd begin in Mitchell, Indiana, in Lawrence County. And from there, you would travel a few miles south down to Orleans, Indiana. You'd take a big, wide swing to the east, and you travel through Saltillo and Campbellsburg, before meandering your way through Washington County to get to Salem, which is our largest city on the trail. And from Salem, then we swing further south and east. We go down through New Pekin and Borden.
We get into Clark County, and we go all the way to the Clark-Floyd County line. And then in Floyd County, we continue right on down to the city of New Albany. The city of New Albany is constructing a connection that will take us to the Ohio River Greenway. So you'll be able to go all the way over to Jeffersonville, take the Big Four Bridge across the river into Louisville from there someday. Mitchell to Louisville, all in one, one continuous trail experience.
Denny Spinner
Wow, pretty amazing. And as you mentioned, all those things along the way, Jeff, there's the collaboration and the work that has brought so many resources together to make this thing happen. One of those resources, the Eppley Center, who has been engaged from the start. Layne, you were in the early phases of this project with Monon South. How did you get involved, and what was your engagement as you, as you came into this project?
Layne Elliott
Sure, the Eppley Center is the university's outreach arm into the parks world. So, we do a lot of planning, consulting, training, anything and everything that people need for parks, all the way from the National Park Service down to very small towns like New Pekin and Borden. We first heard about the Monon South, Jeff invited us to an engagement event down in Salem in 2022, I believe, where we got to take a good look at the early design of it, talk to people who were involved in the planning and the communities. And we knew we wanted to be involved. We weren't sure how yet, but we knew we wanted to be involved in it over the next year.
Steve Wolter, the director of Eppley at the time, and Jeff worked out a project to do park system master plans for communities along the trail, and we ended up with four communities—Borden, New Pekin, Salem, Orleans— who said yes, and let us lead their park system master plan projects. And Mitchell wanted to do their own plan, but they wanted advice from us, so we took a look at what they were working on, told them how to make it better and make sure that they were getting everything they needed.
So we did park system master plans. A couple of major goals with those were to make sure that the communities were thinking about their park system and how it was integrating with the trail, not just two separate things, but using the trail to help their park system and vice versa, and get people who are traveling through long-distance trips on the trail to get off the trail, go to their park system, some of the amazing events and festivals and things that are in those communities that take place in their parks.
And then the other piece of that was, in Indiana, you have to have a master plan on file to be able to access certain funding sources that are administered by the state. So, if you want to make park improvements, you’ve got to have a master plan. So that was the impetus of that project, and we did four of them at the same time, which is really quite an accomplishment.
Denny Spinner
So, Kristy, you jumped into the project as it was going on. Tell us about your engagement, and your role, and what's happening now.
Kristy Anderson
Yeah, exactly. So that first part of the project was somewhat phase one, where we worked to develop those park system master plans for phase two. You know, at the time, the team of us—Layne, Jeff, Steve—started talking about what could be with this trail in the future, and we got this question of, “What would be the economic impact of the trail once it's fully built out?” Traditionally, when municipalities or cities think about making an investment, whether that's a trail, a park, another form of civic infrastructure, they do the development, they do the build out, and then they do a study or an evaluation figuring out that return on investment, that ROI. We wanted to flip the question a little bit, try to determine, based on available data, similar communities or case studies, what do we think the economic impact will be?
And the reason we wanted to kind of ask that at the forefront was we wanted to think about this as an investment. So, whether different funding sources came along at different state, local levels, we could tell the story of what we would see in terms of impact. So that second phase really thought about economic impact. It had a series of methods that we used. We did some kind of looking at the literature of other communities. We did a comparative case study. We did a series of listening sessions with civic and business leaders across the Monon South Trail communities. And then finally, it concluded with an economic projection model where we looked at all this similar data coming out of trails here in Indiana and nationwide—looking at their user data, looking at spending of people who use trails. And then we were able to come up with a pretty robust model indicating that we would project to see, really, millions of dollars of economic impact being funneled through these communities and incremental revenue that can be used for all sorts of great use cases.
Denny Spinner
Well, again, the scope of this project, if you have pulled out your map since we started and look at the just the scope of how much territory this covers, is just really a unique opportunity for our state to come together in ways that that have never been thought about it. Especially when you talk about the largest community in that series is Salem—which is roughly 2,000 or 3,000 people—is the largest center of population along this whole trail. Jeff, what do you see as economic development and rural development? This has just got to be an unbelievably rich opportunity to really bring a lot of southern Indiana together in one theme.
Jeff Quyle
You know, Radius is a regional nonprofit economic development organization. So, prior to this opportunity arising, I don't think any of us would have pigeon-holed trail construction as a part of economic development. But just as your question implies, Denny, economic development really does include things like trail construction. It does include the value of tourism and the dollars and the visitors that come into these communities. As Kristy was talking about the ability, we had to talk to Eppley and get that kind of quantification—the proof that there's going to be new economic vitality coming was very important to our look at this. We had multiple initiatives underway.
Once we really got rolling with this, we had the actual construction of the trail. We were told by the state of Indiana that they were going to give us a nice pot of money, $22 million, but it was ARPA dollars, so there was an expiration date for these. We had to spend them here and now, and we didn't have time to mess around, so we had to work on getting our design work done. That meant that we had to do our public outreach. You've heard Layne and Kristy mentioned that we did public hearings. We had, I think, at least eight public hearings in our first year, as we went out to the public and said, “This is what we're going to do. This is how we think it will work. What are your thoughts about it? What do you see as ways to improve it? What are the pitfalls you see?”
We gathered all that input, and we had tremendous turnout. We had attendance, sometimes we got close to 100 people coming to a public meeting to hear about and tell us about what their community view should be of the Monon South Trail. So that was really great. So we had public input, we had construction design, and we had Radius perspective on economic development is key for these communities—this is going to be the best thing that's happened for many of them. We've got to make sure that we do it right from an economic development perspective.
Denny Spinner
A lot of learning is going on here. A lot of learning has gone on from everyone, and being a university, that job is learning. What's the learning that's going on from your perspective, and also from the students who are engaged in this? What are they learning from this experience?
Kristy Anderson
I think one of the things that we truly try to ground ourselves at Eppley is that everything that we do is data-driven, so everything from, like, the origination of a project to how we go about it, to implementing it. And, you know, our project closed out, we really focus on, you know, looking at best practices, looking at comparative case studies, looking at the literature of comparable trails.
So, for example, and this is just really grounded in our work, because, you know, as Layne mentioned, we have partnerships at national agencies with the National Park Service. But really, what we really, I would say, get a lot of fulfillment out of is serving our communities here in Indiana. We're Indiana University. We take a lot of pride in the Eppley Center, being home at IU, and so we love serving our community in a way that brings the research and the resources of Indiana University to our local communities here across the Monon South Trail, in Bloomington, Indianapolis, all over the state.
And so when we think about using IU's resources, it's a team effort. At IU, we have a team of researchers, practitioners, who are involved in every project, and then we have students working in pieces along the way. So we have master's students, undergraduate students, that we will bring in and out of projects depending on what they're interested in studying or what their skills are. And that's a lot of fun too, because sometimes we're amazed at some of the student talent, and they're building maps for us or doing analysis that's really advanced, that maybe we haven't dusted off that skill set in a few years since our graduate studies. And we have, we have those students kind of jumping in and being the leaders in their respective fields, too.
Layne Elliott
Yeah, I think for me, one of the most fulfilling things is going into a lot of small communities, which I believe tended to work in all these along the trail, plus others. We worked in Huntingburg and Morgantown and some others in southern Indiana. And a lot of these communities have never gone through a master planning process. They just never had that experience. And so we got to teach them along the way about how to do this process, which is then transferable to other parts of their community, whether it's comprehensive planning or economic planning or, you know, bike and pedestrian planning. They have some skills now that they can transfer and do those other things. And that was really, really nice.
And to see the plans that we helped them make, to see some of those things that are in those plans come to fruition is really also fulfilling. You don't always get to see that, but I've been to Orleans. I know that they built pickleball courts in one of their parks and a walking path, which was part of the plan that we had written for them. Borden put in an accessible playground, which is a part of their plan.
So it's really fulfilling to see those things actually happening, because we don't always get to see it. We write a plan, and sometimes we move on to the next project, and we don't get to revisit and see how it's all worked out. But it's really, really great to see that it's working out.
Denny Spinner
A project of this scope. You all have spoken very well about the project, but the challenges had to be out there as well. How did you collaborate? What were the challenges that maybe popped up that maybe you didn't see at first, and how were you able to work together to move past some of those challenges? So I'll just kind of open the table for discussion there.
Jeff Quyle
Well, this is Jeff speaking from the Radius perspective. CSX announced they were going to be selling off this section of rail line clear back in 2018, and so we began having conversations that long ago about who's going to buy this, what's it going to do, can it become a trail, who's going to work together. And by 2021, I think it had crystallized in our understanding that, yes, the city of New Albany is a leading partner in acquiring this trail, Radius is a regional entity and is going to partner with the city of New Albany, and the Department of Natural Resources had expressed interest. And so we had an understanding by that point: these are the partners who are going to help spark the fire that's going to take place here.
But there are all these communities. There are the residents, the neighbors, the local leaders, and we need to get engaged with them. And so I think, Denny, one of the early challenges was we need to go out and talk to local leaders and find out what they think. I've had experience building trails in other communities in different parts of my career. I know there are communities where nimbyism is thriving, and I am a little bit of a pessimist at times. So I frankly expected we were going to go into some of these communities and hear more of a not-in-my-backyard kind of response than anything else.
But what we really heard was this trail can be a great thing for our community. We want this to be a trail. We don't want it to be just abandoned and become a bed of weeds stretching for 60 miles through our part of Southern Indiana. So that was a great feeling. That was one of the very first things that made me feel like we're going to have a success here, when we've got a town clerk or a town councilman or a city councilman or a county commissioner, we've got folks like that coming to us with positive vibes and saying, yes, let's build this trail, and then getting their input about what the character of the trail ought to be.
I mean, they firmly told us, yes, this used to be a railroad corridor. We do want to honor that, but we also want to honor and really focus on just the beauty of Southern Indiana. We've got the hills, the pastures, the agricultural land, we've got the river valleys. That's what people are going to experience when they're on this trail: small towns in a beautiful, rural, agricultural setting. Let's make sure the trail really emphasizes that and plays to those kinds of strengths for our region.
Denny Spinner
So from the very beginning, there had to be a great energy that you were feeling to hear that. I served in many a public entity as well, and you worry about that negativity, but it sounds like there was really good energy from the start and a really great vision for these small communities, saying this is something, this is going to be maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to take advantage of.
Layne Elliott
Absolutely. One of you asked about challenges. One of the biggest challenges that we had logistically was that by the time we got the contract signed with Radius and IU, we had a very, very small window to accomplish the first part of the plan, because there are deadlines with submitting master plans to the state. And the first deadline was coming up for about the first half of the work on November 15, and we started work on October 1.
And this is normally three to four months' worth of work, and now we're doing it four times over, and it took a tremendous effort. The team at Eppley was awesome. The communities were awesome. They gave us the information that we needed. They were all on top of it, and the communities definitely showed up to our public meetings. We had a lot of people show up at our public engagement meetings to give us feedback on what they wanted from the trail and the park system at the same time. So it was really great to see that level of engagement.
Kristy Anderson
Definitely. There were elements when I almost felt like I was just kind of playing a backseat role. Because I still remember, I want to say it was at the listening session, maybe at the Salem library, to double check, but traditionally we kind of introduce the project, describe it, and then we sometimes break people out into small groups to kind of look at different topics and ask them questions about the plan and different elements of it.
I remember there was a little bit of really genuine and honest questioning around not necessarily nimbyism, but concerns about the trail, just because people didn't know. There was a lot of excitement and a little bit of concern. And before I kind of stepped in, because as a researcher I know that there's data to support what you would expect with respect to different metrics like safety and security on the trail, which are generally very high, before I kind of started to go into my facilitation role, someone else at the table, another member of the public, kind of chimed in. They were like, oh, well, actually, you know.
They started to answer each other's questions, which I would love to see during a facilitation role, because it was kind of neighbor to neighbor, talking and getting excited about the project and trying to assuage each other's fears.
Denny Spinner
One of the things that I found fascinating about this project, too, is so many in the community, the railroad was the thing that you wanted to avoid when it was coming through town, and now it's become the asset that we want to take advantage of. That's a big change in thinking in a community about that noisy railroad that was always over here to keep away from the public, but now we're trying to bring the public to this facility. That's got to be a change in mindset. And it's one of those challenges, right?
Jeff Quyle
Yeah, you know, I've ridden trains before, which I know isn't something that a lot of people in the US do anymore, but typically, when you're on a train and you look out the window, you're looking at the nasty side of the city. You're looking at the alleys, you're looking at the loading docks on the back of the factories, you're looking at the homes that couldn't be built anywhere else. But now, as you said, all of a sudden you've taken that negative asset and you've turned it into a positive. It's where people want to be.
You've got property values that are going to flip from the negative element to the positive element. You're going to have developers, or we've been approached by developers, to say, hey, I want to put housing in that's adjacent to the trail. The trail adds value to these properties. And how can we work with you to get those kinds of developments underway?
Denny Spinner
Right, as you look at what's happening now, this last year, Jeff, was a lot of grand openings, a lot of ribbon cuttings, a lot of momentum. So what's happening now that helps keep that momentum going? What do you feel is happening in this next year as Hoosiers hear about this and start coming? What's your anticipation for the next year in the Monon South life?
Jeff Quyle
Well, for the trail, this is leaving infancy and getting into youth. We're not teenagers yet, but this is the year we're going to—we've left construction pretty well behind. In the next month or so, we'll finally have all the trailheads construction completed, and those will be open to the public.
So the year coming up is going to be the year where we're going to learn how to maintain and operate the trail. We need to go out and buy the equipment so we can mow and seal and do all the maintenance that people expect. That's very important, that we maintain the community's respect for the trail and that they continue to see it as a positive asset, and so that the visitors have a positive experience. We can't let it become overgrown. We can't let it fester.
So we're going to be learning how to maintain a trail—20 miles of it. We've got 20 miles of the trail open already, so that's what we're going to be working on, is how do you maintain 20 miles of trail?
Denny Spinner
And from the center's perspective, as you look to what's next, I know this is a continuing engagement. What are the issues that you're going to have to dig into to help along that? But also, again, learning, how are you taking what you're learning here and applying it maybe to other projects in other areas of our state that you engage with?
Kristy Anderson
I think one thing that we're helping, you know, the Monon South Trail and other trails that we work with think about is just how to catalyze all the different benefits of a multi-use trail. You know, you think about a trail and oftentimes your mind might jump to physical activity, but you can think about physical activity for whom.
The great thing about a trail is that it's multi-generational. You can picture a mother pushing a stroller down the trail, all the way up to older adults who might use a mobility device or assisted mobility device. People of all ages, all abilities, can use a trail for physical activity, health, wellness, but also social well-being. Get out there, inviting someone to go out and meet you on the trail and go for a walk together.
That alone, in addition to all the economic benefits you see when I talked about that economic model earlier, traditionally in those types of models, you really only count the out-of-town visitors, because those are the people bringing in extra income to the community. And what we're projecting as the trail grows and expands and connects to pieces, as construction and funding permit, we hope to see millions of dollars of revenue coming into these communities and kind of catalyzing economic development, restaurants, eateries, community and cultural institutions.
And so I think one of the things that we'll just be thinking about going forward is how we could support you all in doing that work and just kind of connecting all the pieces with all different forms of community wellness, whether that's health and economic wellness or social well-being, or all of it, hopefully at the same time.
Layne Elliott
And from a project standpoint, there's a chance to come back later and measure that economic activity and compare it to what the projection was in that project and find out how accurate it was, where we can tweak, where we can improve that, and take that model then to other trails, having a really good setup and methodology developed from the Monon South that helps us and helps other trails that want to figure out their economic impact as well.
Denny Spinner
One of the things that I've also noticed as I've watched this project develop is the communities are all working together. They're also doing a great job of making their portion of the trail reflect who they are. I think there's been a lot of work in recognition that while we are tied together for this trail, they're bringing out the positive aspects and the beauty and the culture of their own town as they have this opportunity.
I think that's something that's really been kind of a mix of we're all together, but we still want to keep our identity. How's that working out?
Jeff Quyle
Well, from the economic development perspective, Denny, one of the things that we've talked about is developing a regional Main Street organization. Some of these communities aren't large enough to have the resources to administer a Main Street organization, something that really helps activate the downtown business district. So Radius is stepping in as a partner, and we've put together this organization. We've hired a staff person who's very outgoing and dynamic and is visiting every community, is promoting the businesses in the community, is helping them activate with their 5K races or festivities.
We've worked with the IU Center for Rural Engagement. We've had plein air students come out and do paintings for the past couple of years in the communities along the trail, which, in a way, is exposing the communities to the art as well as exposing the artists to the communities and the trail. That's been a lot of fun.
We've put together an advisory board, so we get people from each community who we meet with once a month and say, here's what we're doing, here's what we're facing, here's what our opportunities are. And we get input from them. We've even found the communities are thinking in very pragmatic terms. You know, they're asking, hey, you've got this trail that runs right through the center of our town. Can we work with you to widen the adjacent road? For instance, a couple of communities said, hey, we've got a road that's maybe a lane wide. We want it to be two lanes so cars can pass one another. Can we move the trail over a little bit to open up some additional easement right-of-way? So we've talked about doing things like that.
There are drainage issues where we want to work with them jointly to make sure that when you get a big flood or when you've got a big downpour coming through, that the town and the trail aren't overwhelmed by massive water. And they've all been good partners. We've all found ways to work together.
Denny Spinner
So as we are looking at maybe the first—you know, last year was a lot of firsts. Now the trail is open. A program like ours is being heard by people from across the state who say, well, I need to know more about this. What would you tell someone who's wanting to find out more information about Monon South? What would you tell them to do? And how can they access this wonderful resource?
Jeff Quyle
We made sure that, from an economic development perspective, we knew we wanted visitors to come to every community, so we made sure that with the grant dollars we had, we not only built out sections of the trail in every community, but we also built a trailhead in every community.
So anyone who's a visitor, they can go online. They can go to mononsouth.com, and they will come to our website. It will show them maps of where the trailheads are located in the downtowns. There's going to be parking, bike racks, public restrooms, seating, tools for repairing their bikes. Visitors are going to find that we have worked with the communities, and we've tried to open our arms to have visitors come to each one of these communities and experience the trail.
Denny Spinner
I know that all of you have spoken very well about your preferred professional engagement in this Monon South, but from you personally, as you look at what's happening here, what's been exciting so far, and what do you see as exciting in the future for you personally as you look at this project develop?
Layne Elliott
Well, for me, a particular focus of mine, professionally and personally, is outdoor recreation in smaller communities and how that impacts conservation, how that impacts economic development. I grew up in a very small town, and there were no trails like this anywhere around. It's a pretty new thing, relatively speaking.
So I'm excited to see the communities that have embraced the trail and their people, their residents, are out there on the trail using it and forming walking groups and the social activity that goes on on the trail, as well as the physical activity and recreational activity. So it's really, really exciting, really personal for me. Since I first learned about this trail, I've been involved in some way or another, and I want to continue to be involved, to see it all develop and see what a benefit and what a terrific thing it is for these communities.
Kristy Anderson
I've had some really kind of personal takeaways from this project, too. And I don't even know if Layne or Jeff is aware of this, but when this project started two or three years ago, and then till now, I feel like trails have just kind of been top of mind in a lot of ways. And then when my husband and I went to buy our first home, I was like, I wonder if in this area there's a multi-use trail that, if at the end of the day when we get off of work, rather than having to go hop in the car to go get a bite to eat, we can take a trail.
And we bought a house in a neighborhood that's right on a multi-use trail. So that's been just really fulfilling for me. It's fun. But I would just kind of say I've been a bit of a proponent, a big fan of trails, and I always just say, get out there. You know, I think a lot of people sometimes are intimidated by knowing that there's a big stretch of trail in their backyard. But if you just do half a mile back and forth, that's a mile. And then you can go get your coffee after that on a work day or on a nice Sunday morning.
So I just say, get out there. It's been a lot of fun, personally.
Jeff Quyle
You know, I think speaking personally now, I think it's been the relationships that we've developed with community leaders up and down the trail. You know, I've met folks from very small communities, communities that have probably rightfully felt ignored and neglected for decades and were maybe a little cautious about opening their arms at first. But as we've talked with them, we've shown them sketches, we've listened to them, we've built partnerships. They've come to really be good acquaintances and friends in many places.
And it's good to know that we can still have those human touches, those human connections, those things that aren't social media on an app or a platform somewhere out there.
Denny Spinner
And this is a great example, as a Center for Rural Engagement, of engaging rural communities. This is about as good an example as you can have. Exposing those who may not have seen what rural Indiana is like, this is a tremendous opportunity for those who are maybe in an urban setting most of the time to come and visit and be engaged. I can't think of anything that could be more engaging than this project.
So from the Center for Rural Engagement, we've been engaged in this as well with you. What are some of the things that are happening with CRE and students that really are exciting to see?
Jeff Quyle
You know, we have had two student groups last semester who did studies on the trail for us, made presentations, and really helped us think about how we market the trail and the communities and the businesses along the way. As a matter of fact, one of the groups did such a great job that we've invited them to come to our annual State of the Trail symposium and make their presentation again to the community leaders who will be attending that.
So CRE, Center for Rural Engagement, has been a real asset. We've learned that we can turn to them to ask for other services and see what else they can provide. I think they've opened our eyes quite a bit to what all IU students have to offer to communities who just have to ask for it.
Denny Spinner
And it opens the eyes of students to an opportunity that they may have not had before.
Jeff Quyle
Yeah, you know, taking those students on road trips to places like Campbellsburg and New Pekin, some of them are from the East Coast or what to us seems like big cities like Fort Wayne or Indianapolis. And yeah, they've not seen a Campbellsburg- or New Pekin-kind of community and really embraced what life is there and what life can be there with the trail.
Denny Spinner
Well, I want to thank you all for being with us today, and I know the future of the Monon South Trail is nothing but bright as it continues to develop. And your work, I know, will lead to a lot of great things happening because of your work. And we appreciate the time and effort that you all made to be part of this. Jeff and Kristy and Layne, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you for joining us for this discussion about the Monon South Trail. Thanks to our listeners, and we will look forward to hearing from you, seeing you again in our next episode of Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers.
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