The Cookeville Regional Medical Center Charitable Foundation developing a new community wellness loop to connect the Tennessee Tech campus with the West Side.
CRMC Charitable Foundation Executive Director John Bell said the project focuses on improving public movement around the hospital campus to create a safer experience for pedestrians. Bell said the initiative involves designing wayfinding signs, public rest areas, and landscaping to make the corridors more user-friendly.
“It’ll give the public an easy-to-understand and safe pathway to do some wellness tracks between those areas of the city,” Bell said.
Bell said the foundation expects to receive approximately $150,000 over several years through a Tennessee Department of Health HART grant. These funds will cover pedestrian pattern consultations, the installation of bike racks, and the placement of water stations.
“We’re trying to make this be a community-led initiative,” Bell said. “We’ve got a large committee that’s looking at that and that includes folks who run some of the areas that are being tossed around as the final loop, run those areas almost daily.”
Bell said the project was inspired by an existing walking path around the hospital that has become dated since its installation over 15 years ago. The new loop aims to unify fragmented areas so visitors and students can intuitively navigate between local businesses and the university.
“We want to encourage folks to get out and get active and to do those things which are great for overall health and especially cardiac health and revitalize some of those older walking path areas that have since fallen by the wayside,” Bell said.
Bell said the final length of the path depends on the route selected by the committee, though options include a one-mile quick route and a longer three-mile loop. The project is being coordinated alongside CityScape and officials from Tennessee Tech.
“This might be a pilot project for some of those other groups additionally to grow it and pursue other grant funding to take this concept kind of in a broader area in other locations in the city,” Bell said. “So it’s a good trial run, I think, for wayfinding and for these community meeting spaces.”
Bell said the planning and design phase will last roughly eight months, with the goal of having the loop installed by the spring of 2027. Once preliminary designs are ready, the foundation plans to use its website and social media to gather community feedback through surveys.