Cliff Walk year-round attraction

Newport’s dramatically perched Cliff Walk has been restored – and some say improved – since the damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.
“I think Cliff Walk never looked better,” said Discover Newport President and CEO Evan Smith. “The surface, in many spots, is better than before. Some of the walls and steps are also in better shape now.”
Even though the late autumn and approaching winter months are often considered off-season for tourism in Rhode Island, Smith said Cliff Walk stays popular year-round.
“I pass hundreds of people on Cliff Walk all the time. They’re out there even on a cold January day,” said Smith. “There’s no academic study that’s been done on the economic impact of Cliff Walk, or how many people use it, but intuitively we know that more Rhode Islanders use it in the off-season. During peak months, we see travelers from all over the world.”
Restoration of the picturesque 3.5-mile National Recreation Trail was celebrated in June with a ribbon-cutting attended by Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee and other officials, although the work continued for another month, said Discover Newport spokeswoman Andrea McHugh.
“Cliff Walk never fully closed,” said Smith. “The area from the Breakers to Rough Point at the southern end had the worst damage.”
The $5.2 million project included an initial contract for $3.2 million and an additional $2 million while the project was underway to repair a wall near Rough Point and to install a stone wall at the fence line of the Miramar property for additional stabilization, said R.I. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Rose Amoros.
The project was paid for by Federal Highway Administration emergency relief funds from Hurricane Sandy, which required a 20 percent match from the state, said Amoros.
Cliff Walk has continued to attract those who stroll and appreciate the scenery of the sea and Newport’s famed mansions, as well as drawing energetic hikers to the more rugged portions of the walkway.
“We estimate that hundreds of thousands of visitors experience this top attraction annually,” said McHugh. That’s based on the hundreds of thousands of people who ask about it and how to get there in the Newport Visitors Center each year, she said. “If you were to ask our visitors-center staff what our No. 1, year-round attraction is, they would say Cliff Walk,” said McHugh. “And, of course, there are the thousands of residents who run and walk on Cliff Walk daily.
“As for economic impact, visitors who experience Cliff Walk help generate tens of millions of dollars in peripheral revenue, including lodging, dining and shopping,” said McHugh. “They invest in our community.”
One estimate is that about a quarter-of-a-million trips per year are made along Cliff Walk by people of all ages, according to www.cliffwalk.com, which is sponsored by Newport-based Friends of the Waterfront, a group with the goal of preserving public access to shorelines.
Public interest in Cliff Walk is strong and one factor documenting that, and likely contributing to recent attention, is a Facebook page for Cliff Walk, said Vic Farmer, one of the founders of Friends of the Waterfront more than 30 years ago. The Facebook page launched about two months ago, he said.
“The reason Cliff Walk is so important to me is the public access. It’s a terrific, recreational walk,” said Farmer. “You find so many nationalities there. And now we have a new sign of European travelers – love locks.”
Love locks are typical combination or key locks, like ones that might be put on a gym locker, engraved with the names of lovers.
Popular on bridges in Paris, “the padlocks are a public expression of love. Couples, mainly tourists, buy them from vendors on the bridge, inscribe or write their names on them, lock them to the railing and throw the key into the water,” according to an article “Love in the Time of Padlocks,” by Daniel Stone in the June 16, 2014, issue of National Geographic.
“Love locks showed up on some of the fences at Cliff Walk within the last year or so,” said Farmer. “I’ve seen one section with about 100 locks and another section with about 40 or 50. “To my mind, it doesn’t detract. It shows people are interested,” said Farmer. “In fact, I think some people may plan to come to Cliff Walk for that. A couple might say, ‘We’re going to put our lock on Cliff Walk, you and me.’ ”
Whoever arrives at Cliff Walk will arrive at a destination more secure for the long-term than before Hurricane Sandy damage, said Robert B. Power, chairman of Newport’s Cliff Walk Commission.
“For instance, behind the Miramar estate there had been stone dust on the path and that washed away. It’s been replaced with material that will last a lot longer,” said Power.
The completed restoration is important, even as the chill gets in the air, he said.
“Cliff Walk is huge in the off-season,” said Power. “People come there all year-round. It’s the largest tourist attraction in Rhode Island.”
One additional improvement that’s proven popular is the removal of three port-a-johns on Narragansett Avenue near the Forty Steps entrance to Cliff Walk, he said.
“We now have two unisex restrooms with running water,” said Power. “That project finished in August with $400,000 in grants from the state and some city money.
While the popularity of Cliff Walk is measured in the hundreds of thousands and it was named one of the “10 Great Public Spaces of 2014” by the American Planning Association, the value of the seaside trail can sometimes be measured by how it impacts one person at a time.
“My father walked there every day,” said Rep. Peter F. Martin, D-Newport. His late father, Frank Martin, was diagnosed with cancer in 1981.
“They told him he had six months to live,” said Martin. “We all mourned that fact and prepared for his dying.”
Frank Martin’s daily morning ritual of going to Cliff Walk began after that diagnosis.
“He would go out there and meet all the people along the way. Sometimes he walked his dog, a German shepherd named Heidi. He’d be out there for a couple of hours,” said Martin. “He died three years later. I think those walks extended his life.” •

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