"We're expecting a lot of bikers to come through town is what we're hoping for," Papa's Pizzeria general manager Dustin Comer said last year, describing a bar addition and beverage menu he called "beyond pizza place drinks." The restaurant also knocked open a wall to its neighbor, Fenders Brewing, so the two spaces now share a doorway. None of that was hypothetical planning for some distant future. It was a bet, made before a single foot of new trail reached downtown, on a route that almost went somewhere else entirely.
If you live in Polk City, you already know a trail is coming. What you may not know is that the version being poured right now, this month, isn't the version the city originally drew up. And the reason it changed is the same reason it now runs feet from the storefronts on the square instead of skirting around them on N. 3rd Street.
The Route Was Supposed to Hug 3rd Street. It Doesn't Anymore.
The Polk City Junction Trail closes a 1.25-mile gap between two trails that already anchor a lot of local life: the High Trestle Trail to the northeast and the Neal Smith Trail, which traces the east shore of Big Creek Lake and continues south along Saylorville Lake. For years the plan kept the route close to N. 3rd Street for most of its length. Then unexpected costs forced the city to redraw it, according to Mayor Steve Karsjen, and the new alignment sends cyclists straight past the town square instead.
The actual path, once finished, will run roughly like this:
- Start at the High Trestle Trail oasis northeast of town, which the city and the High Trestle Trail Steering Committee have agreed to rename Polk City Junction, honoring the 1875 rail spur that once branched off there toward town.
- Head southwest through farm fields to the site of a proposed city park near Big Creek Elementary School.
- Turn onto N. 3rd Street and head south through Kiwanis Park.
- Turn off at W. Bluff Street, then onto N. 2nd Street, reaching a new trailhead at W. Walnut Street.
- Continue past the town square at N. 2nd and W. Broadway.
- Follow E. Bridge Road west, cross S. 3rd Street, and meet the Neal Smith Trail just east of Saylorville Lake.
That detour through the square is the whole story. A trail that hugs 3rd Street is infrastructure. A trail that runs past storefronts is an economic event, and downtown businesses have been treating it that way for more than a year.
What's Actually Happening on the Ground This Month
This isn't a someday project. The city council approved the construction contract for Phase 4, Phase 5, and the trailhead this past April. By the June 22 meeting minutes presented at the July 13 council session, work crews were already building south from the Big Creek Elementary school site toward the new trailhead. Polk County Conservation is separately building the northern leg between the High Trestle Trail and the Polk City limits, with that segment also targeted for completion in 2026, at an estimated cost of $1.4 million for the connector as a whole, according to Polk County Conservation spokesperson Jessica Lown.
Mayor Karsjen has previewed a ribbon cutting for fall 2026. As he put it in an August update to residents:
"Stay tuned for the announcement of our ribbon cutting for the trail, which is planned for fall 2026."
He's also planning to use that same event to celebrate the newly renamed Polk City Junction oasis, the spot where the historic 1875 rail spur once split off toward town.
For context on how long this took: initial planning for the connector started back in April 2017, the first joint meeting between the city and Polk County Conservation happened in July 2018, and by the mayor's own count, a meeting in October 2024 was his 57th on the subject. A mile and a quarter of pavement, in other words, took the better part of a decade and dozens of meetings to get right, which says something about how much the routing decision actually mattered to the people making it.
The Trailhead Lot Is Also Your Parking Lot
Here's the part that affects your weekend plans right now, not eventually. The new trailhead going in at N. 2nd and W. Walnut is being built on what's currently an empty lot, and it will include parking, green space, picnic tables, a shelter, and a restroom. But that same lot already functions as overflow parking for the town square, and the city has explicitly asked its contractor not to use the whole site for staging equipment because of it.
That matters because the square hosts things residents actually attend. Polk City Arts and Culture's Final Fridays series runs from 5 to 9 p.m. on July 31 and August 28 this year, both dates falling squarely inside the active construction window. If you're planning to catch the August 28 event, the parking situation around the square is worth a second thought this year in a way it wasn't last summer.
Papa's Knocked Down a Wall Before the Trail Existed
Go back to that doorway between Papa's Pizzeria and Fenders Brewing. Fenders describes itself as a woman-owned craft brewery a mile off the Neal Smith Trail, already positioning itself as a stop after a day of biking, fishing, boating, or camping. Its rotating taps include a weekly limited release called Friday Flavors, and the connecting doorway to Papa's means a rider can grab a slice next door without leaving the building.
That kind of physical renovation isn't cheap or easy to undo. A business doesn't open a wall on a hunch. Comer's read on the situation, that a trail running feet from his door was worth restructuring the restaurant for, is a more honest signal about what this project means locally than any press release from the city. The two businesses effectively pre-built for foot and bike traffic that hasn't fully arrived yet, betting on a route the city itself hadn't finalized until cost pressure forced the change.
What Changes Once the Trail Actually Opens
Once the Junction Trail connects, a resident on the south side of town will be able to start at the square, ride north past Kiwanis Park, cross the future city park site near Big Creek Elementary, and reach the renamed Polk City Junction oasis without touching a county road, something the mayor has pointed to as the whole reason he pushed the project after moving to town in 2017 and finding no easy way to reach the High Trestle Trail from Polk City. Head the other direction from the square and the same rider connects to the Neal Smith Trail near Saylorville Lake, and from there to the beach and boat rentals at Big Creek State Park, home to the largest beach in Iowa's state park system.
The square, in that scenario, stops being a stop on the way to somewhere else and becomes the actual junction the trail's new name describes. That's a different kind of downtown than the one Polk City has had for the last several years, and it's why a pizza place tearing down a wall in advance of a ribbon cutting is a more useful piece of local information than the ribbon cutting itself.
If you already call Polk City home and you're watching this stretch of downtown change shape one construction update at a time, that's the kind of local read the Bruellman Team likes to share. If a friend or family member ever finds themselves priced out of the Des Moines market and wondering whether a town like this, with a square that's about to become a genuine trail junction, might be worth a look, Andrew Bruellman and the team are always glad to talk it through.
