Danville City Commission approved an easement Monday that will allow a plan for a mountain bike trail to move forward.

The easement on Heritage Hospice property authorizes a “public multi-use non-motorized recreation trail” that will be part of the larger trail system planned for Danville and Boyle County.

There are three property owners the city is currently working with, but Heritage Hospice owns the property on the southeast side of where they would like to place the trail, City Engineer Earl Coffey said. 

“(Heritage Hospice) has stepped up and shown a willingness to dedicate a portion of their property to develop the mountain bike park feature along our trail system,” he said. “When we saw this wooded area, we saw that this was an wonderful opportunity to build this mountain bike trail.” 

The trail will be connected to the city’s Clark’s Run Trail and would be one piece of a much larger vision the Danville-Boyle County Trails Alliance has for opening up Boyle County to more and safer non-vehicular travel. If all the envisioned trails are completed, people would be able to hike and bike in a loop all the way around Danville, with trails and roads reaching into downtown Danville and out to the western portion of Boyle County.

If the city is able to obtain all of the property they are asking for, the trail will be less than three miles long, Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Jennifer Kirchner said. 

Coffey said a long-term goal is to place a pump track, which would be a circle track mainly for children that would be part of the mountain bike path.

Coffey said the trail would not cost nearly as much as what the city spent on Clark’s Run. 

“This is very positive in my opinion,” Commissioner Rick Serres said.