A stretch of land between Hobson Grove Park and Morgantown Road in Bowling Green may soon become part of the city’s planned greenway loop after the city last week approved a $1.2 million grant application to the U.S. Department of Transportation to cover planning and design of that part of the Jennings Creek Greenway project.

“There’s always been a desire, a goal to construct a continuous greenway loop around the city of Bowling Green,” City Grants Coordinator Nick Cook told the Daily News. “There is a substantial gap right now.”

Bowling Green City Manager Jeff Meisel said during the May 21 Bowling Green City Commission meeting the Jennings Creek Greenway would extend from along Veterans Memorial Lane from Hobson Grove Park to Morgantown Road, filling in the roughly 2.5 mile gap.

“This would tie in nicely with our Jennings Creek Greenway project to close in that gap on that side of Bowling Green,” Meisel told commissioners during the meeting.

The $1.2 million grant application requires matching funds of $300,000. Since the route lies inside and outside of city limits, the match would be split 50/50 with Warren County Fiscal Court and the city, with each providing $150,000, according to a memo from Cook.

“You will have basically a pedestrian spine that goes around the city,” Cook said. “You’ve got pedestrian facilities on Veterans (Memorial Lane) past Morgantown Road, you have pedestrian facilities along Campbell Lane, Lovers Lane, Cemetery Road. This will address a substantial gap in that network.”

Cook said the city previously used grant funds from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Transportation Alternatives Program to create the Moss Middle School and Jennings Creek Elementary School Greenway, which opened in spring 2021. That greenway runs from the rear of Jennings Creek Elementary to Creekwood Drive through an area of town hit particularly hard by the Dec. 11, 2021, tornadoes.

A separate project to install a boardwalk across a wetland area near the creek was taken on by Bowling Green Parks and Recreation after the Bowling Green City Commission approved in March a grant award for the project totaling over $385,000.

Cook said the city is looking into other pedestrian routes. He said one, the West End Greenway, would fill in a gap between Kentucky Street and Gordon Avenue. Another would link Clay Street with the area of Old Barren River Road, Victoria Street and Veterans Memorial.

Cook is hoping to hear this fall on the status of the application. As far as how the completed Jennings Creek Greenway project would look, Cook said “we don’t know.”

“It’s completely conceptual at this point,” he said. “We would love for it to be a shared use or multi-use path along Jennings Creek. The reality is terrain and right of way acquisition requirements will dictate where exactly the path will go.”