Residents hoping to renovate the aging Loring Greenway may finally get their wish next year—if the city can come up with enough dough.

The picturesque pathway between the Nicollet Mall and Loring Park was constructed 28 years ago and has been showing its age in recent years, with paving stones missing and foliage deteriorating. “If it were a private property, the city would be all over us,” neighborhood activist Richard Anderson told Jeremy Stratton in the Downtown Journal (formerly Skyway News).

Anderson and other nearby residents, including Council Member Lisa Goodman, have been after the city to make needed repairs for several years. And though some work was done in 2003, city public works officials had planned to delay the remaining work until 2010, a decision Goodman called “the last damn straw.”

The project is now part of the 2006 Public Works budget, but there is some question whether there will be enough money to cover the work, which includes such things as replacing concrete and brick surfaces, adding street lighting, and perhaps creating separate bike and pedestrian paths. The $1.1 million currently budgeted for the work, however, may not be sufficient, so the city is looking to the federal government to cover what it expects will be about a $400,000 gap.

Work is expected to begin in the spring.