The unpaved portion of the AgriCenter is soon to be paved and completed
After sitting half-finished for many, many years, the Agricenter Trail at Agricenter International is finally going to get its middle connecting section, allowing visitors to enjoy more its lush landscape. The Agricenter recently received a $100,000 Shelby County Commission Community Enhancement Grant to complete its trailway.
Agricenter Trail, a Greenprint Certified Project, is a partially paved path that starts on the west end of the property at the Pick Your Own Strawberry Patch and ends at the Agricenter Farmer's Market on the east end.
“We’re really excited about the opportunity to complete our trailway and tie the whole property together,” said John Butler, president of Agricenter International, “It will provide a lot of additional value from a customer-service standpoint because it will allow people to see more of the great landscape’s the Agricenter offers.”
The Agricenter is the world’s largest urban agricultural research and education facility, with 600 of its 1,000-plus acres used for research.
The Agricenter Trail ties in with the Greenline at Shelby Farms Park and the Wolf River trail system, and it gives visitors a glimpse of production crops, research plots, and the solar farm. The trail leads to the Farmer’s Market, located at the site of the original 1930’s dairy barn from the Shelby County Penal Farm.
“The completed trailway will give people better access to be able to bike to our Farmer’s Market for fresh fruits and vegetables,” Butler said. “It will extend right past our solar farm, strawberry patch, sunflowers, and then numerus fields of cotton, corn, soybeans, and other commodities.”
Bollards, which were acquired through a recent IOBY campaign, will also be installed during the project.
Work on the trail started as far back as 1983 when the Agricenter was founded. The intention over the years had been to pave it to completion, but the funding was not there to finish the project.
Butler does not have a timeline for construction yet. The Agricenter plans to take bids for the project’s design and construction.
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Michael Waddell is a native Memphian who returned to Memphis several years ago after working for nearly a decade in San Diego and St. Petersburg, Fla., as a writer, editor and graphic designer. His work over the past few years has been featured in
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