City inks purchase of rail corridor for Greenway Trail, finalizing long-awaited sale

Concord is the proud new owner of a nearly six-mile-long stretch of rail line that runs through the northern half of the city.

The $535,000 purchase from CSX Transportation doesn’t come as surprise: City leaders approved it in the summer, and the state waived its right of first refusal over the land in the fall. The finalized sale is a long-awaited step forward for the Merrimack River Greenway Trail, an initiative to build a rail trail from the southern to the northern end of the city along the Merrimack River.

Shorter segments of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail, dubbed the MRGT, have already been completed on the east bank of the river. The newly acquired land comprises the majority of the trail’s proposed path through the city. Advocates hope to one day connect the Greenway Trail with rail trails in Boscawen to the north and Pembroke to the south as part of a statewide rail trail network.

“Corridors like this don’t come along every day,” said Dick Lemieux, president of the Friends of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail. The group is “elated” that the sale went through.

The city has partnered with the nonprofit behind the Greenway Trail for years, and in announcing the sale, City Hall praised the project as an economic opportunity likely to grow the property values surrounding the trail, expand the tax base and bring in new businesses to support biking, skiing and the trail’s other uses.

The trail will “will further enhance the City’s standing of being one of the premiere communities in New England in which to live, work and play,” the announcement read.

Designing the next segment of the trail will begin this summer, according to Lemieux, with construction starting about two years later.

The sale’s closing also turns the city into the landlord of the Scenic RailRiders, a rail cart biking business that has operated on the tracks for the last few years. The purchase agreement gives CSX, a national freight company, the right to remove and reclaim the rail track and tie material. City leaders expect CSX to exercise that right, though it’s not clear when that might happen.

The tracks’ removal spells the end of the RailRiders in Concord.

Gary LeBlanc, who owns the business with his family, still believes that it’s possible to work out a deal to save the tracks and allow the RailRiders and the rail trail to coexist.

Planners with the city and engineers with the Rail Trail have disputed that idea: If the city were to preserve the tracks, it would need to widen rivercrossing bridges, build a platform for the trail alongside the corridor and potentially compensate CXS for the cost of the salvage material.

The trail’s design requirements are tied to a federal grant needed to pay for the project, and any delays could jeopardize that funding, according to the city and the nonprofit.

At a minimum, LeBlanc hopes the city will clarify whether he’ll be allowed to keep his lease and operate his business during this coming summer. The decision is the city’s to make, as the business’s new landlord, but it also depends on when CSX comes to retrieve the rails.

“We’re hanging in limbo,” LeBlanc said. “I don’t know if they’ll let us run at all this summer.”

The RailRiders have a month-to-month lease over the tracks. If the business won’t be able to open this season, LeBlanc would rather know sooner than later.

“I don’t want to keep paying the lease until June if they’re just going to kick me out,” he said.

Mayor Byron Champlin said he isn’t aware of when CSX might come for the rails, but he said it’s reasonable for the LeBlancs to expect an answer from the city about their lease “within a month or so.”

Champlin said he doesn’t believe a side-by-side arrangement is feasible, adding that it would put Concord at risk for absorbing skyrocketing project costs. He also underscored that the RailRiders knew about the plans for the rail trail when they started their business, which LeBlanc has acknowledged.

The LeBlancs see their business as an attraction that brings money into the city.

Stefanie Breton, the city’s public information officer, said in an email that the city will be reaching out to the family “to talk about the future” but did not return a request for further information.

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