Upper and Lower First Creek Greenway Channel Trail Connection

Brian, 

I'm with you on temporary signage and a possible Greenway spur on Mitchell St. near Abbey Fields, but I remain unconvinced that a trail in the channel for First Creek isn't viable.

I am not ready to give up on a connection between Upper and Lower First Creek via the creekside and channel route,

Principally because not only do we see this approach taken at Third Creek Greenway under Cumberland Avenue and Second Creek at Neyland Drive, there are more examples from "Low water stream crossings for trails and greenways" at American Trails.

Of particular interest:

"Waller Creek Trail is built on concrete pad in flood channel, Austin, Texas; photo by Stuart Macdonald, July 15, 2007."

The trail crosses the creek via concrete low water crossing bridges 8 times in this section, according to http://www.austinparks.org/our-parks.html?parkid=367  

While the trail was originally built in 1976, perhaps still in the "wild west" of creekside greenway construction, it's recently been renovated: https://www.wallercreek.org/about/timeline/.  

From what I can tell, most of this trail is within the FEMA floodplain. Note that Austin does struggle with flooding events damaging the trail.

Here's FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer, set to Austin Texas at the Waller Creek Trail terminus on the Colorado River:

http://arcg.is/1EWmucu

By comparison, here's Knoxville Tennesse at First Creek - in fact, there appears to be far less "floodable" area than Waller Creek. 

http://arcg.is/1EWmLfv

For further comparison, Here's Knoxville Tennessee at Third Creek and Cumberland:

http://arcg.is/1EWmSrq

And of course our lovely Third Creek Greenway underpass at Cumberland built just a few years ago.

The Austin Waller Creek Greenway trail is part of Waller Creek Conservancy, a source of pride and re-development in Austin, TX: https://www.wallercreek.org/map/.

I see a lot of similarities between Waller Creek in Austin and First Creek in Knoxville.

I think it'd be worthwhile for our board to see what lessons we can learn from Austin's Waller Creek Conservancy that can be applied to First Creek - particularly with respect to the low-water bridges and flood channel pathways.