With $44 Million, Detroit's RiverWalk Inches Toward Belle Isle

One of Detroit's great success stories got even better Monday.

With $44 million in new funding, the Detroit RiverWalk will now complete the full 3.5-mile stretch between Hart Plaza and Belle Isle.

That portion of the walk is mostly done, but work is needed at the old Uniroyal site just west of the Belle Isle Bridge, and at some other smaller gaps.

As John Gallagher writes in the Free Press, Monday news means that Detroit is inching closer to the day when the full 5.5-mile RiverWalk from "bridge to bridge" -- from the MacArthur Bridge to the Ambassador Bridge -- will become a reality.

That goal was first articulated by Coleman Young in the 1970s.