March 3, 2004

Los Gatos Creek Trail extended

Yeager, Parks and neighborhood associations
dedicate bridge

Carol Rosen
Editor

Nearly 100 people joined District 6 City Councilmember Ken Yeager, officials from the city’s Parks and Recreation and Neighborhood Services and leaders of local neighborhood associations to open the new Gregory Street bridge over Los Gatos Creek on Saturday, Feb. 28. The bridge spans the creek and a ravine to extend the Los Gatos Creek trail.

The bridge is part of the city’s Greenprint vision to build a “citywide trail network that encourages alternative transportation modes and provides access to recreation.” Ground was broken for the bridge in August of 2003 with construction beginning in September and was completed recently at a cost of $257,000. In addition to the prefabricated steel bridge, JFC Construction landscaped the area around the bridge, installed fencing, a drinking fountain for people and one for dogs, benches and improved the sidewalk on the Gregory Street side.

“I was here in 2000 planting trees [to improve the neighborhood], and it’s great to be back to dedicate the bridge,” said Yeager who has made the trail one of his priorities while in office. ”I’ve been involved in the trail system for a number of years. We’re working with the city to purchase the Willow Glen Spur and then develop the trail north of Highway 280. This [bridge] is an important link in completing the Los Gatos Creek Trail, which we hope will be finished in late 2006 or 2007.”

Yeager added that he is “pleased that this bridge provides a welcome pedestrian path over the Los Gatos Creek. The bridge moves trail users one step closer to realizing a vision of trails stretching from Lexington Reservoir to Alviso. The bridge provides pedestrian and bicycle access to the Gregory Street neighborhood and extends to an existing trail on the west side of Los Gatos Creek.”

City officials hope to begin construction of the northern portion of the proposed trail and the southern portion to Coe Avenue in October 2005.

Yeager also thanked the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Ser-vices, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, CALTRANs, the Metropolitan Trans-portation Commis-sion, the Department of Public Works, the Greater Gardner Coalition, the North Willow Glen Neighbor-hood Association and the Gregory Plaza Neighborhood Association for their help.

Cliff Price, president of the Gregory Plaza Neighborhood Association (GPNA) and Tom Smith, president of the North Willow Glen Neighborhood Association also thanked the people for coming out and for helping open the bridge. Once the opening comments were complete, a red and gold ribbon was stretched across the bridge and then cut by Yeager and representatives from the Neighborhood Associations and various city departments.

After the ribbon was cut, officials, neighbors and friends and several dogs walked across the new bridge and received a button that said “I crossed the bridge today!” along with a rendering of the bridge, the creek and the trail, and wandered on down the trail.