Ilsa Minor | Daily Press At right, a portion of the walking path in Ludington Park is shown. Enhance Escanaba, which sought to build a nature trail in the park, reached a compromise with the city Thursday. That agreement will lead to the beautification of the existing path.

ESCANABA — The Escanaba City Council voted to approve a modified plan for improvements in Ludington Park from Enhance Escanaba, a beautification and gardening group founded and led by sitting Council Member Karen Moore.

Much of the controversy around the original proposal, which would have added a crushed gravel nature trail to the park, was Moore’s involvement in the plan and her advocating for its approval during council meetings. During Thursday’s meeting, she made no comments about the new project — which will instead beautify the existing walking path in the park — leaving the presentation on the project to Enhance Escanaba’s treasurer, Mary Gail Blasier.

“We are planning a number of areas to plant. It would be all the way down from the marina down to where the residences begin and there would be a number of areas. We would love to have anyone from the community come and help us,” Blasier told the council.

Moore had previously argued that approval from the city and the recreation department was not needed for Enhance Escanaba’s acceptance of a $25,000 grant from America in Bloom, a beautification organization with ties to Canadian National Railroad that supports projects in cities with CN railroads passing through them. She argued that because the city’s previously approved five-year recreation plan included the concept of a nature trail the project had already been given the necessary approval from the city.

However, when the council was asked to approve entering into a contract with Enhance Escanaba to allow the group to install the path in the park and commit the city to a $10,000 in-kind match to the grant, the rest of the council balked at perpetual maintenance costs and residents expressed frustration or questioned the legality of Moore’s involvement with the project.

Council Member Tyler DuBord advocated for a compromise where Enhance Escanaba would beautify the existing walking path at the park during both the April 3 meeting, when the new path was initially proposed, and at the May 1, meeting when the project failed to garner support from the rest of the council. Initially, Moore and other members of the group said doing so would be against the spirit of the project, which aimed to bring pedestrians down closer to the water.

That changed Thursday.

“I do want to thank Enhance Escanaba (for) considering for the previous discussion to coming back to council with a different proposal that I feel can meet the middle ground meeds to beautify our current path or provide a little bit more botanical view walking our current path that we currently have,” said DuBord.

The new plan would place a series of arboreta — groupings of non-native trees and shrubs — along the path. Each of the 26 proposed arboretum would be different, though only five examples drawings of the arboreta were included in the agenda packet.

Escanaba resident and Delta Conservation District Secretary Glenn VandeWater was the only person to speak in public comment about the proposal. While he generally supported the idea of arboreta in the park, he questioned the size and number of plantings, the fact the plantings did not extend onto Aronson Island, and the lack of native plants being included.

Blasier said island was rejected because it was costal and native plants were rejected from the plan mostly due to maintenance issues.

“We decided not to go that route. Native pants tend to make a mess of themselves, and they need followup to look decent and organized. So what we have decided to do is more of an arboretum type effect, which will be trees and woody shrubs, many of them flowering. And they don’t need pruning and they don’t need deadheading and all the other things that native plants do,” she said.

According to Blasier, Enhance Escanaba has the support of Scouts for the project, including one Scout who will be creating educational kiosks for each arboreta as an Eagle Scout project. Mayor Mark Ammel said he hoped others in the community would assist with the beautification project so residents felt ownership of the resulting gardens.

“There’s all sorts of people that share the park and I want to make sure that no one feels disenfranchised about their own space. So the more we involved and invite others to join us in our projects, I think the better sense of community that we have,” he said.

The project was approved unanimously by the present council members with Moore abstaining. Council Member Ron Beauchamp was absent.