Staff recommends City Council accept the trail easement on lot 3 of Corrected Plat of Riverfront Business Park Subdivision.

Roth Enterprises LLC ("Grantor") is the owner of the property located on Lot 3 of Corrected Plat of Riverfront Business Park Subdivision (Recorded Document No. 3467871). The Grantor is granting the City of Billings ("Grantee") an easement for a multi-use trail. The easement is 33' wide by 780' long. The easement is shown in Exhibit A of the easement document attached to this report.

A multi-use trail along this easement will help provide connectivity between Riverfront Park and Mystic Park, making it a key connection in the Marathon Loop Trail. The Marathon Loop is a planned 26.11-mile trail loop that will one day encircle Billings. Parts of the Marathon Loop are already constructed, but some sections, such as the one between Riverfront Park and Mystic Park, are incomplete. This easement will be a key element in moving the community closer to having the full Marathon Loop Trail completed.
 

City Council may:

• Accept the trail easement to add a key section of the Marathon Loop Trail corridor, or;
• Not Accept the easement and miss a significant opportunity to further the Marathon Loop Trail corridor around Billings. Opportunities provided by property owners for the City to secure trail easements for the public are rare and may only come along once in decades. The opportunity for the City to work with this land owners and secure this easement should not be missed.

The City will pay the Grantor a total of $1.00 for the easement, resulting in almost no initial financial impact to the City budget. In the future, the City Parks Department will have maintenance responsibilities for taking care of the trail corridor both before a trail is formally constructed and afterward. The City Parks Department does this now on trails around the City. There is no identified funding in the FY2021 City Budget to construct a trail on this easement, but securing the easement will make it easier for City staff to investigate funding options in the future for this area of the Marathon Loop.