NATCHEZ — Over breakfast at the Marketplace Café Thursday morning, interested citizens got a preliminary breakdown of the Natchez Trails Project.

City Engineer David Gardner invited the head designers on the project to present potential ideas for the project.

Dwight Weatherford of Weatherford McDade, Ltd., planning consultants and landscape architects, began the presentation by explaining parts of the downtown portion of the walking trails.

Hap Owen a designer with Communication Arts Company gave a short presentation of signage and trail markers.

The trail markers would be for the downtown portion of the project and Owen said they would be color coded and placed on the trail to keep people on track.

“They would be cast bronze and embedded in the sidewalk at each intersection,” Owen said.

Each round marker would have “Natchez” written on them and with an arrow pointing in the appropriate direction.

Several options were presented for interpretive signs to be placed along the trails, as well.

These signs would depict historical landmarks, the research for which has been mostly completed, Owen said.

Weatherford then moved on to the bluff portion of the trails.

He said he would like to place a simple gazebo on the grassy area at the end of Main Street, which would serve as an information area.

The gazebo would be somewhat nondescript so it wouldn’t detract from the “grander” gazebo that’s already there, Weatherford said.

Along the bluff, Weatherford said they would like to light the entire trail, place benches for seating and also have a landscaping strip to possibly house crepe myrtles.

He said he would also like to have a continuous loop of bicycle trail along the bluff trail.

Jim Coy, director of Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, suggested that widening the sidewalk that is already there between Roth Hill Road and Silver Street would cut too much into the green space.

It was decided right then that the bike trail would only go north of Roth Hill.

Weatherford also suggested having an outdoor café with seating placed outside the old depot station, where Old South Trading Post and Cock of the Walk currently are.

“It should enhance business,” Gardner said.

The outdoor café got a positive response from those in attendance.

Two staircases were initially proposed to connect the upper bluff trails to the lower bluff trails and it was discussed that morning to potentially take one away.

Both staircases would be costly, Weatherford said.

Gardner suggested taking away the longer staircase by Learned Mill Road and leaving the one by Silver Street, this got a general positive response as well.

The trails committee will now meet soon to go over the proposed designs and suggestions, Gardner said.

Once everything is decided, Weatheford said it will be between four and six months for his company to complete their design work.

After that, there will be a two to three month approval process with MDOT and another month of advertising for bids for construction.

He said construction will start next spring.