CLIVE, Iowa, December 18, 2009 – The Iowa Department of Transportation has allowed officials of the City of Clive parks & recreation department to re-open the Clive Greenbelt Trail where it passes under the bridge on Interstate Highways 80 & 35.

Jeff Thielen, Clive’s parks maintenance supervisor, said Friday that the Iowa DOT’s approval came this week, and that on Friday, Clive staffers got the barriers removed and snow cleared from the trail under the highway bridge.

That bridge is being reconstructed, and the trail beneath it was closed in early September to be sure that construction debris would not fall on trail users.  The trail was to re-open in November, but the construction work ran late. 

Now that it is re-opened, it is expected to stay open until sometime in the spring when “Phase 2″ of the bridge reconstruction will begin.

So, to be clear, the Clive Greenbelt Trail is now fully open going east from the Raccoon River Valley Trail, through Clive to Seventy-third Street.

That’s “a great holiday gift to all who use the trail system,” said Clive’s Thielen.

It also re-establishes the connection of the RRVT to the rest of the trails in the metro area.