WATERLOO - Construction workers, heavy equipment and cement mixers have overtaken the Riverview Recreation Area.

Two years after getting a state grant to spruce up the 400-acre city park in the former Mitchell Avenue sand pits, a wooded area along the Cedar River downstream from downtown, the transformation is now in full swing.

"We had two years of flood delays," Leisure Services Director Paul Huting said. "But it's a beehive of activity out here now."

The recreation area, which as been in development since the early 1990s, is divided into a state-sanctioned off-road vehicle area for motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles and a "passive recreation" area at the end of Mitchell Avenue, which includes areas for fishing, kayaking and hiking.

A $200,000 Resource Enhancement and Protection grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources is helping fund about $300,000 in amenities to the passive park side, including picnic shelters, recreational trails and walkways, a park entrance sign, traffic control bollards, landscaping and grading. The city is putting in $26,000 in bond funding and in-kind services to complete the effort.

Meanwhile, contractors are finishing work on a recreational trail extension from 18th Street to the Riverview area, connecting the park to the rest of the Cedar Valley's trail system. A pending $52,800 contract would extend that trail, creating a winding concrete path through the woods on the south side of Riverview's lake.

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, as construction crews bustled along the banks, several fishermen were trying their luck as a couple drifted lazily in a boat in the lake. Huting marveled at how far the park had come since the 1980s, when the "Mitchell pits" was an uncontrolled haven for after-hours parties, calls for police service and frequent illegal dumping.

"A lot of people use it. On weekends it's really pretty busy out here," he said. "And the fishing must be pretty good because they're always out here."

The combination of motorized vehicle trails, no-wake boating and the hiking and biking trails have state organizations looking at Riverview for a statewide trails summit next year. "It's really the only place in the state where you can find all these types of recreation in one place," Huting said.

Susan Lewis helps market the area trails for the Waterloo Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Projects like Riverview are among the reasons the area was tapped as a finalist for the Iowa Great Places program.

"This is just one more thing that ties in to what we have to offer," Lewis said. "All of these are quality-of-life and they bring people into our area to see what a jewel all of our trails really are."