Columnist Susan Snyder: Hoping trail takes right path

Friday, July 23, 2004 | 8:27 a.m.

The plan for a proposed trail along Flamingo Wash is in its infancy, but Toby Sulenski already knows what she hopes to see there.

The Winchester neighborhood resident has been keeping track of the wash's wildlife for most of the 18 years she's lived near it.

Green herons, roadrunners, killdeer, American kestrels and Gambel's quail are among the 34 different bird species the Winchester neighborhood resident has jotted into her wildlife journal.

The kestrel lives there, her notes say. Rare visitors included a great blue heron in the 1980s.

"It's pretty," Sulenski said of the wash. "That's why people like it."

Sulenski and about 30 other residents attended a public meeting Tuesday about the proposed Flamingo Arroyo Trail. The gathering gave three artists charged with designing amenities for the trail the chance to describe what some of those could look like. It also gave residents a chance to ask questions.

And residents had a lot of those -- few having to do with what benches and bridges could look like along the 13-mile trail that's anchored by Clark County Wetlands Park on the east and Eastern Avenue on the west.

The trail is being paid for with a grant from the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, in which money from sales of federal land in Clark County goes to such projects.

The project coincides with Clark County Regional Flood Control's overhaul and improvement of the Flamingo Wash. That project is to be completed in 2005 or early 2006. Flood control officials aren't directly involved in the Flamingo trail, but they support the idea.

"It seems like it would be an appropriate use, as long as it's outside the (wash) channel," district director Gale Fraser said Wednesday.

Residents Tuesday night were more hesitant. They wondered whether crime, graffiti and encounters with homeless people will increase in their neighborhoods as the trail attracts walkers, joggers and bicyclists.

Urban trails actually curtail crime, graffiti and other unwanted behaviors, county officials told the group. They create community ownership. Even people who don't live along the trail will want to help take care of it and keep it safe, said Barbara Grygutis, a Phoenix artist hired to help design amenities.

"When the community gets out and gets involved, it creates that sense of ownership," she said.

A 1998 study by the Rails to Trails Conservancy shows crimes are less likely to happen along trails than in other public spaces.

"Crime generally does not occur in places where there are lots of people and few hiding places," the report says. "Positive-looking places tend to encourage positive behavior."

The report includes letters from police chiefs and sheriffs in cities that have urban trail systems. One of them, from Charles Tennant, police chief in Buena Vista, Pa., says:

"We have found that the trail brings in so many people that it has actually led to a decrease in problems we formerly encountered, such as underage drinking along the river banks."

Like many residents, Sulenski already keeps close watch on Flamingo Wash. After all, one never knows when a black-chinned hummingbird will turn up.

Stay tuned to this spot. We still need to discuss concrete and golf balls.