This article is the fifteenth in a series profiling the varied and amazing nominees for the 2008 Alice B. Toeclips Awards, which will be presented to five winners at the Alice Awards & Auction on March 22nd. We won't have time to interview everyone, so be sure to check out their descriptions online. This profile was written by BTA correspondent John McLaren

Years ago, Mel Huie’s parents rode a trolley along the Springwater Corridor, which was once a rail service called the Portland Traction Company Line. Who could have guessed back then that Huie would help transform that 20-mile-long track into what is now the longest leg of the Portland/Vancouver trail network.

A Portland native who grew up in a home without a car, Huie is a principal regional planner with the Metro Parks and Greenspaces department. Over a 31-year career, he has carved a reputation as a can-do consensus builder known for his leadership in imagining, planning and implementing projects. As the lead planner for the regional trails program, his purview encompasses more than 200 miles of trails and 700 miles of proposed trails and greenways.

Huie is a great believer in the powers of good coffee and dim sum to smooth negotiations and help form working partnerships. (And when it comes to using the region’s trails, he also wants it known that he is “an avid walker” but “stops at all the nearby eating establishments.") This relationship-based approach, combined with his persistence and his long memory, has helped secure funding from all levels of government to carry out regional trail projects. In recent years Huie has also found a new funding source for urgently needed trail planning by successfully bundling master planning projects for federal funds.

The most recent and visible mark Huie has made is the "Three Bridges Project" on the Springwater Trail, for which he helped secure $4.3 million. It was the largest grant ever given through Metro for a single trail project and a watershed event in the region for trails. Among the many other projects that have benefited from Huie’s attention are the Fanno Creek Trail, the Tualatin River Bridge, the Gresham-Fairview Trail, Peninsula Crossing Trail and the Trolley Trail.

He has had lots of help. All the projects have acquired funding and come to fruition, he says, as the result of team efforts involving many other trail planners, leaders, advocates and volunteers.

With all the movement in the Metro area to open new pathways for cyclists and other non-motorized users, Huie casts a somewhat envious eye at Amsterdam. Normally a fair weather cyclist, he rode a bike every day on a week-long visit to the Dutch city. “You see bikes everywhere,” he says. Even if you’re not keen on bicycling, “going there will change your mind.”

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