Kayaking for everyone
<p>KRISTEN McPEEK/Press Lynzie Sendra finishes a hike with her daughter, Kylee, at East Tubbs Hill Tuesday in Coeur d’Alene. A ceremony for a new Tubbs Hill trail and honoring Tom McTevia is noon Saturday at the hill’s east entrance. McTevia, who died last month in an ATV crash, was a longtime advocate for creating a more accessible trail on Tubbs.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE — The east side of Tubbs Hill could be the future site of a kayak launch that is accessible to people with disabilities.
According to Coeur d'Alene Parks and Recreation Director Bill Greenwood, the department in January submitted an application to the federal government to receive a grant from the Recreational Trails Program, which provides states with funding to develop and maintain recreational trails and non-related trail facilities. The amount being requested for the potential ADA-accessible site is $94,000. The area in question, Tubbs Hill Park, 982 E. Lakeshore Drive, qualifies for the grant as a water trail.
"You're going to have access to the water that has a pathway that allows access to a dock so that people could get into the water," Greenwood said. "It's the only non-motorized kayak launch that the city owns."
Greenwood said the city tried to do something similar at Independence Point not too long ago, but the project stalled and a working solution was not available at that time.
"We were looking for another spot so we thought this might satisfy that need for an accessible launch as well as a passive launch," he said, adding that the potential site on the east side of Tubbs would be something people of all disabilities and abilities would be able to use. Plus, the location already has an ADA-friendly trail thanks to the Tubbs Hill Accessible Trail that opened to the public last May.
"It would be for everyone," he said of the possible future kayak launch.
Greenwood said it is only a potential project right now and he doesn't want to get people too excited yet because the department won't know if the funds are granted until June. The grant was submitted with a conceptual design to give the federal agency an idea of what the plans could look like.
"Here's an opportunity we may have," Greenwood said.