The next expansion of the Harpeth River Greenway will extend from the Bellevue Exchange Club Section near Reese Smith Jr. Ball Park on McPherson Drive to the Morton Mill trailhead at Morton Mill Road and Old Harding Pike.

Composed strictly of trails and with no structures needed to be moved or built, the construction should be under way by spring, according to projections.

Initially, the expansion project has to go through a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) permitting process, as well as a design process implemented by design firm Lose & Associates. The project, which will cost about $1.24 million, would then be put out for bid.

“Lose was chosen through the RFP (request for proposals) process and was selected based on their proposal’s merits for designing the greenway and managing the project,” says Shain Dennison, director of the Metro Greenways Commission, a division of Metro Parks and Recreation.

In Nashville, Lose also designed the Stones River, Whites Creek and Mill Creek greenways. Roughly 40 miles of greenway trails have been completed throughout Davidson County. Metro’s greenway program has preserved about 40,000 acres of open space.

Greenways are natural area passageways often constructed along waterways and are considered to be community asset. They help to make it an agreeable place to work or play and typically link neighborhoods to libraries, schools, retail areas, recreational sites, and workplaces.

“Greenways provide multiple benefits: health, both for the opportunity they provide to exercise through walking, running, and cycling; environmental, for greenways in floodplain areas help preserve the riparian zones, which help improve air and water quality; and as a means of alternative transportation,” Dennison says.

Metro Parks and Recreation’s Parks & Greenways Master Plan shows the Harpeth River Greenway will eventually stretch from Warner Parks to the Cheatham County line. When funding allows, another missing link in Bellevue’s greenway project will be filled by connecting the Morton Mill Section to the Harpeth Youth Soccer Association Section.

There already are some greenway easements for that phase that were part of the Home Depot development on Highway 70 South.

“There were some greenway dedications to link that up and even to provide some linkages up to the Bellevue Center mall and back,” says John Lavender, project manager at Lose. “That’s all of what would be considered I guess the next phase after this.”

During the May floods, a bridge leading to the Soccer Association Section of the greenway was overturned, but Metro Parks is working to get it righted.

“They expect to have that up by the first of the year,” Lavender says. “The bridge is salvageable. They just have to get it flipped over. They’re going to have to bring a crane in to lift it up, turn it over, and put it back into place.”