Connecting Heritage: Linking Community

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Dubuque County, Iowa is located along the Mississippi River at the point where three states meet (Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin) — a community often referred to as the Tri-State Area. Heritage Trail is a 26-mile multi-use recreational trail comprised of compacted crushed limestone that follows an abandoned railroad right-of-way connecting the Dubuque on the eastern edge of the county to Dyersville on the western edge near the famous Field of Dreams baseball diamond. The county, seven cities, and the Dubuque Soil and Water Conservation district formed a consortium and are working together on a Regional Comprehensive Plan that uses the 13 comprehensive planning elements and ten smart planning principles in the state code to add sustainability goals and objectives into each of the communities' comprehensive plans. One of the goals of the Dubuque Smart Planning Consortium is to promote economic development in the region by connecting all seven cities in the consortium to Heritage Trail.

A CPAT project team provided the consortium recommendations on how to make the trail more accessible and user friendly, how to promote the sustainability of the trail, and how to expand the recreational and economic development opportunities of the entire region. The Heritage Trail project was Dubuque County's first sustainable project on a regional scale and will serve as a model for similar broad-area efforts in the county.

Meet the Team

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Team Leader

Paula Reeves, AICP CTP

Paula Reeves has been developing transportation projects for the State, cities, counties, and transit agencies for 20 years. She currently manages the Community Design Office at Washington State Department of Transportation and serves on the board of directors of APA's Washington Chapter, chairing the Community Planning Assistance program. In both these roles she provides a range of transportation planning and engineering services to cities, counties and transit agencies. She has a broad transportation background that includes urban design, engineering, environmental experience, and she is a practicing mediator in Thurston County. Reeves also serves on the National Transportation Research Board's Pedestrian Committee and the AICP Community Planning Task Force. She earned her master's degree, with engineering and law school course work in urban and regional planning, from the University of Florida.

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Team Member

Jean K. Akers, AICP, RLA

As park planner and landscape architect for the Vancouver-Clark Parks and Recreation Department in Washington, Jean Akers oversees the park acquisition, planning, capital development, and asset management programs for the city's park and trail system and Clark County's urban and regional parks, trails, and open spaces. She works with state, city, and county agencies, organizations and citizen groups to facilitate the overall planning, policy development, and acquisition of viable open spaces to improve the quality of life for residents while protecting the integrity of the natural environment. A registered landscape architect, certified planner, horticulturist and consulting arborist, Akers has been working across these professional disciplines to create and foster ecological landscape design and planning for over 30 years. She has design experience in integrating rainwater resources into the landscape through planning, site design, and land management techniques.

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Team Member

Jason Epley, AICP, CPM

Jason Epley is executive vice president of Benchmark CMR, Inc. He has 17 years of experience in the planning profession, and his past positions have included working with municipal, county, regional, and state government planning programs throughout North and South Carolina. He specializes in comprehensive planning, development regulation, urban design, public involvement, and meeting facilitation. Epley also he serves as the executive director of the North Carolina Downtown Development Association. A Certified Public Manager, Epley has managed a number of complex planning projects, including a recent comprehensive pedestrian and greenway plan for the City of Clinton, North Carolina. He also served as the co-chair of the All American Trail development committee, overseeing the implementation of the 26-mile multi-use trail connecting three counties in southeastern North Carolina.

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Team Member

Steven Lane, AICP

Steve Lane is a senior environmental planner with Parsons Brinckerhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has broad experience in wetland ecology, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documentation, and federal and state environmental permitting. Lane is responsible for preparing environmental permit documents, categorical exclusions, and environmental assessments. He also has technical expertise in wetland identification and delineation, threatened and endangered species surveys, and terrestrial ecology studies. Much of his current work involves transportation corridor studies.

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