Greenways Program
The Tallahassee-Leon County Greenways program represents a resource-based approach to accomplish the following primary objectives:
- Enhance the protection of remaining natural systems, including preservation and conservation features as defined in the Comprehensive Plan and environmental ordinances;
- Provide natural and open space connections between neighborhoods, parks, schools, and historical and cultural sites;
- Incorporate greenway and open space orientations into infrastructure design to enhance more traditional capital projects to achieve multiple public and natural resource benefits, and;
- Provide additional areas dedicated for conservation and open space thereby expanding recreational opportunities such as walking, hiking, biking, skating, horseback riding, and nature interpretation.
The Greenways program will provide opportunities for other community services, such as alternative means of transportation and economic development. It will offer numerous points of access to existing public facilities and a network of additional features that are not currently managed to meet or further greenway objectives. By doing so, the Greenways program will also provide education about the various resources within the system. The Greenways program is intended, like the area's road system, to link specific resources and neighborhoods to each other while consolidating the community as a whole. The program also aims to resolve conflicts between resource protection and land use regulation by increasing landowner options while meeting all of the community's land protection objectives through focused efforts on land acquisitions and set-asides. In addition to having a better and more integrated natural resources protection system, and enhancing recreational opportunities, one of the intended results of the Greenways program is to reduce the current sense among property owners that natural resources protection is punitive. This can be accomplished primarily by providing appropriate compensation and incentives, improving develop ability of sites where appropriate, and simplifying the development review process through the pre-identification of significant resources (by virtue of their Greenway designation).
The Greenways Program is proposed to be a multi-year effort consisting of several components. The initial activity, completed in 1995, was to conduct a preliminary delineation of a comprehensive, county-wide Greenway system, not unlike the process used by the Metropolitan Planning Organization in its analysis of potential corridors or highway improvements. This delineation was intended to provide general guidance about potential greenway locations for other ongoing activities, such as transportation improvements, stormwater facilities design, and modifications to the Future Land Use Map, and to provide a basis for further discussion about the system.
Implementation
Implementation of the Greenways system will be a long-term effort, requiring continuous refinement of the boundaries of the system in response to changes in land use, updated information about the existing land use database, increased accuracy in defining the region's natural features through digital technology, inclusion of more cultural features, and community and neighborhood preferences.
In conjunction with the establishment of the Greenway system via acquisition of property, modifications to existing regulation, and facilities development and operations, the Greenways program will include a community outreach and education component, which in turn will affect the overall design of the system, especially in the developed portions of the City and County. This component will feature workshops, exhibits and supplemental studies addressing access, recreational use, public safety and security, buffers, aesthetics and the general interface of neighborhoods with the system. The program will also include a component addressing ecosystems management to ensure that the habitat and hydrological values of properties within the system are maintained or restored where possible.
The program has planning and potential regulatory aspects which will need to be evaluated in the context of how these activities now function with regard to conservation of resources and the provision of open space and recreational opportunities. The program necessarily contains a component addressing the funding of acquiring interest in real property, long-term management, and the interaction of the greenways system with business concerns in the community. Because of the diversity of features and geographic extent of the system, implementation of the Greenways program may be anticipated to be focused on certain greenway segments at any one time.
Greenway Features and Design Objectives
In general, the Tallahassee - Leon Greenways system is proposed to consist of three general categories of features: "hubs" which represent the larger agglomerations of resources and facilities, such as major floodplains or park complexes, "sites" representing smaller, less well connected resources, and "connectors" which are typically linear features that provide some level of ecological or recreational linkage between such hubs.
Depending on the scales and general locations of the features involved, these hubs and connectors have different characteristics. For example, within the Urban Services Area, the Greenways system is proposed to consist of many of the existing parks and recreational facilities (plus anticipated acquisitions), schools, and the universities. Here the connectors, which will tend to be narrow, may be expected to include utility or drainage easements, designated bikeways and linear parks. In the more rural portion of the County, the Greenways system is proposed to include major floodplains, significant stands of critical habitat and intact examples of the region's phyisography. Connectors between such hubs in the undeveloped areas may include natural drainageways, ridgelines, Canopy Roads and abandoned rail corridors, plus any associated buffers. Because of existing development patterns, the more rural areas of the Greenway system may be expected to contain a larger share of environmentally sensitive features. Also, the relative widths and lengths of the connectors among these features may be anticipated to be much larger in the un-urbanized parts of the County.
Because the greenway system is multi-purpose, different general design objectives encompassing these features are proposed for the different regions of the County. Foremost, the Greenways system is intended to include a majority of the County's Conservation and Preservation features, as defined within the Comprehensive Plan:
- Wetlands, waterbodies and watercourses (altered and unaltered)
- High quality successional and native forests
- Floodplains (altered and undisturbed)
- Canopy Road corridors
- Habitat of listed species
Not every instance of the Conservation and Preservation features within the County has been included. Some features may be overlooked in the initial mapping, and a determination of its appropriateness to be included in the greenway network should be made. Other sensitive features may be too isolated, fragmented, or of poor quality to be included in the greenway network. Existing ordinances address the protection for such resources. The implication here is that these areas should not be the focus of acquisition or easement efforts. The Greenways system does, however, attempt to provide for more functional and ecologically-based connections among as many important natural resources as possible, and will include many features of ecological significance that otherwise do not qualify for protection under the land development regulations (e.g., buffers, and habitat of non-listed species).
The second design objective of the Greenway system is to connect local parks, schools and historical or cultural sites with each other and with the community's neighborhoods. Depending on their relative sizes, these recreational and open spaces can serve as greenway hubs for several adjacent neighborhoods or they may be construed as nodes of activity ("sites") along connectors between the larger hubs.
Consequently, connectors between the various hubs are to be located as to include as many of these sites as possible, given constraints such as existing land uses or the presence of major roads. Where appropriate, the corridor or connector width should reflect the buffer requirements of the natural resources within the connector (if any) and the anticipated levels of use by walkers or bikers.
In sum, the Greenways program must do the following:
- Identify which resources and parcels need to be incorporated into the group of hubs to enhance their resource values;
- Determine which alignments of connectors provide access to the largest number of most significant sites;
- Determine which alignments of connectors best contribute to the environmental integrity of the overall network; and
- Prioritize hubs, sites and collectors to establish a kernel for the system and provide impetus for the remainder of system's development.
Consequently, successful implementation of the Greenways network will require different means of ensuring protection and public access, where appropriate. This information will be determined mostly from the second phase of greenways mapping, which will be parcel-specific at a scale on the order of 1"=200' (the initial mapping was conducted at a scale of 1"=2000').
Status of the Tallahasse-Leon County Greenway
The two existing major hubs within the urbanized portion of the County include the Phipps-Meridian-Overstreet-Maclay greenbelt (1,820 acres) on the north side of Tallahassee and the Tom Brown Park-Lafayette Heritage Trail-Woodstork Rookery complex (1,738 acres) on the east. Smaller hubs are being acquired and assembled.
- Canopy Roads Citizens Committee
Countywide Water Resources Citizens Advisory Committee
Greenways Recognition
The work on greenways by the Planning Department led to special recognition by the Governor in resolutions proclaiming the Lafayette Heritage Trail, Phipps/Overstreet/Maclay, and Cascades Greenways as part of state greenway system. The overall City-County program was also one of only four local governments in Florida that received such recognition. The City and County also received 1000 Friends of Florida Annual Greenways Award. The acquisition of the Piney Z and Block properties also garnered the City and County the 1996 award for "Outstanding Achievement in the Protection of Archeological Resources" from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.
Accomplishments
Lafayette Heritage Trail:
Completed the acquisition of 778 acres of Piney Z Ranch, and an 17 acres owned by Byron Block that comprises Phase I of the Lafayette Heritage Trail. This land will be used to construct a trail from Tom Brown Park (with a connection to the future Goose Pond Bicycle Trail) along and across Lake Lafayette to Pedrick Road and the Swift Creek Middle School. Phase II (Alford Arm, 876 ac) was acquired in 200 with funds from the office of Greenways and Trails.
Map (PDF)
Governor's Park
Acquired nearly 200 acres north of Governors Square Mall. The land will be used as a passive park that is to be incorporated into surrounding intense residential and commercial development.
Map (PDF)
Miccosukee Canopy Road Greenway
The State of Florida acquired about 405 acres along Miccosukee Road from Fleischmann to Crump Roads. The land will be used to help preserve perhaps the most scenic stretch of canopy road in the county, and also protects endangered wildlife habitat and rare upland forests. The park will feature recreational trails, mountain bike paths, equestrian trails, and an active sports complex. Leon County has agreed to manage the property and to develop these amenities.
Map (PDF)
Lake Munson Preserve
The County acquired 62 acres on Lake Munson with extensive frontage on Crawfordville Highway. This land will be used as a park to complement other county efforts to restore Lake Munson and Lake Henrietta. The park will include a new boat ramp, pier and boardwalk system.
Map (PDF)
Lake Jackson Greenway Acquisitions
The County was successful in obtaining Florida Communities Trust grants, to be matched with Federal grant dollars, to acquire about 26 acres (Okeeheepkee Prairie) on Meginnis Arm, and adjacent to the Indian Mounds State Historical Site. 43 acres (Jackson view) were acquired to prevent unwise lakeshore development.
Map (PDF)
Jackson View map (PDF)
Elberta Crate
The City secured funding from the Department of Community Affairs to create a park and trail terminus for the St. marks trail at the FSU-City stormwater Facility.
Downtown Greenway
The City of Tallahassee is applying for State Redevelopment and Brownfield funds to enhance three historic greenspaces on the west end of downtown. These will include pedistrian links.