Slidell Mayor Ben Morris got a surprise visit from Washington, D.C. officials Monday afternoon with a promise of federal help for the proposed Tammany Trace trailhead in Heritage Park.

John Young, the deputy assistant secretary for field policy and management with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with a group of HUD regional directors dropped in at the mayor’s office to discuss the trailhead and recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

The HUD regional directors were having their yearly meeting in New Orleans, and Grover Mouton, director of the Tulane University Regional Urban Design Center, was taking the HUD officials on a tour of Southeast Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast to check on recovery efforts.

Slidell Mayor Ben Morris, left talks with Robert Young, the assistant deputy secretary for field policy and management for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Monday afternoon about HUD'€™s plans to help Slidell with the trailhead in Heritage Park. (Staff Photo by Erik Sanzenbach)

“This is our disaster week on the Gulf Coast,” Young said. “A lot of these managers have not had to deal with hurricanes, and they wanted to learn more about the rebuilding process.”

Young and Morris have a lot in common. Morris is in his second term as mayor of Slidell, and Young was the mayor of Augusta, Ga., for six years before going to work for HUD.

Though a trailhead doesn’t have much to do with affordable housing, Young said HUD is also in the business in helping cities create economic tools such as the trailhead.

One of Young’s pet projects at HUD is the Preserve America Program. He and First Lady Laura Bush started the program in 2003 to help cities preserve the architecture and ambiance of towns across America.

“We recognize cities like Slidell that have tried to preserve their buildings and try to help them,” Young said.

One way to do that is by offering grants ups to $250,000 to cities to be used to help promote preservation and tourism. Young invited Morris to apply for a grant to help with the proposed trailhead. Even though there is a June 30 deadline for the grant application, Young said he is more than happy to help Slidell get through the application process as fast as possible.

Mouton, who is helping Slidell come up with a plan to preserve the architectural integrity of Olde Towne and the Fremaux Corridor, said Preserve America is perfect for Slidell.

“This grant will be more for preservation in the whole city rather than one small part,” Mouton said.

Young said the grant goes mainly for marketing and creating more tourism in Slidell. The city needs to market the trailhead because it will be an economic tool to spur growth in the city.

Morris said the trailhead would be the culmination of the Tammany Trace, a bike and pedestrian path that starts in Covington and winds through the parish. Currently, the Trace ends at the western end of Slidell.

The parish has plans to extend the path all the way to Heritage Park, but the current construction on U.S. Highway 190 has put a hold on the plans. The plans call for a tunnel to go underneath U.S. 190 in order to connect with Heritage Park. Since the highway is undergoing expansion currently, the tunnel’s length has not been decided and will have to wait until the extra lanes are added to U.S. 190.

That hasn’t stopped Slidell from going forth with the trailhead, Morris said.

“We will put up the trailhead, and the Trace will eventually get here,” Morris said. “It’s good to be the start of the completion of the Tammany Trace.”