David Schmalz here. There are only a few topics I’ve consistently reported on for nearly a decade, and one of them is the Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway, aka FORTAG, an approximately 28-mile bike and pedestrian trail loop spanning the former Fort Ord from Marina to Del Rey Oaks, and connecting to the Rec Trail on the coast at its northern and southern ends.
The first story I wrote about it was in December 2014, about two years after the plan’s co-founders, CSUMB professors Fred Watson and Scott Waltz, started working tirelessly to make it become a reality.
And tomorrow, its first funded segment—which spans 1.5 miles in Del Rey Oaks—is having its official groundbreaking at 1:30pm at Del Rey Oaks City Hall. (Actual construction will begin in June.)
In my cover story about FORTAG in September 2021, in advance of a make-or-break ballot referendum among Del Rey Oaks voters on the fate of the 1.5-mile segment—which narrowly passed in favor of the trail—one of the last lines reads, in part: “…given the bumps in the road [FORTAG is] facing right now, it calls into question whether the region is capable of doing hard things, and whether its residents and future generations can have nice things.”
And I couldn’t be happier to report that now, more than two-and-a-half years later, we are soon to have those nice things, even if it’s a few years in the offing—construction of the segment, which will span from the Canyon Del Rey/Fremont intersection to an endpoint along Plumas Avenue in Seaside—is expected to take about 18-24 months.
Also, there are currently two fully funded segments in Marina still inching toward final design, and a plan for a segment running through Laguna Grande Park is in the works.
The decade-plus partnership between Watson and Waltz is likewise worth recognizing, as they’ve juggled their work schedules to continually push the project forward.
And once the pieces of FORTAG start to get built, the hope, Watson says, is that it will build momentum for all the remaining pieces. “Once things start to connect together, it becomes a positive feedback [loop],” he says, and will transform “how we view our community and live in this space.”
But they’re not just looking ahead, they’re both relishing in this milestone, years in the making—they’ve had more than 400 meetings about the project in the past decade, Waltz says.
“It is absolutely a celebratory moment to have this grassroots effort become a physical reality,” Waltz says. “It’s kind of amazing. It reminds me a little bit of, I think, that Margaret Mead quote.”
The quote he’s referring to, which may be apocryphal, reads: ”Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
I hope to see you there tomorrow. I’ll be arriving by bike.
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