The State of “The Head”
To Recap, the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA) with MORE as a partner, secured a Virginia Recreational Trails Program (RTP) grant for the amount of $184,000. This grant is a 20% matching grant and supplies $152,000 in direct funding with a $32,000 matching funds/services and material requirement. To date MORE has raised $32,000 in cash and there has been over $18,500 in materials and services donated, with over half of that being stone from our kind benefactor’s at Vulcan Materials.
Of the $184,000 cash that the FHP had to spend on the project, $131,752.94 has been invoiced as of the July 4th holiday week. This leaves the project with a balance of $52,247.06.
Here’s the breakdown on what’s been built so far:
Project Area 1: 3,799 linear feet of new trail with 910 linear feet of closure for a net gain of 2,889 linear feet of trail.
Project Area 1
Project Area 2: 9,083 linear feet of new trail with 2,651 linear feet of closure for a net gain of 6,432 linear feet of trail.
Project Area 2
Project Area 3: 7,234 linear feet of all new trail with no closure. PA3 also contains a nearly 600 feet of a purpose built jump line as well as 3 optional expert level drops.
Project Area 3
The net gain in trail mileage for the first three project area’s is approximately 3.14 miles bringing the total trail mileage at Fountainhead Park to approximately 14.04 miles. This distance is a dramatic increase to the original estimates from the RFP and is due mostly to the change orders in the first three Project Areas. These change orders could not have happened if it weren’t for the generous donations that MORE received towards the project.
The budgets for Project area’s 4 and 5 have been revised to make sure that that the remaining funds are not exceeded. In PA4 either the option for Segment 2 or Segment 3 will be not be exercised fully. The current thought is to leave Holy Grail (PA2 Segment 2) mostly alone with some repair work on a couple of the blown out turns. In Project Area 5 segment 1, the proposal for three wooden features will not be exercised and will save the project $1200.
The new estimated trail total for the Phase II portion of the FHP is now 3.6 miles and will bring the estimated total for the entire trail to 14.5 miles. (Final trail distance will be determined using a Professional GPS, mapper and GIS software). When MORE first helped open the trail it was barely 5 miles long. Most of us are extremely happy with the 300% increase!
If you want to help us stay on target or even get some of the unexercised options restored into the construction process please consider a donation. We estimate that we have between 4 and 6 weeks left before competition. If you have ever considered donating, no matter how small or large, now is THE time.
To Donate please go to: Fountainhead Project Donate Now