Durham's North-South Greenway: Complete, at last

This morning's Herald-Sun contains a good accounting of the fits-and-starts progress of South Durham's C.M. Herndon Park near Southpoint, which opens Thursday a staggering eight years after it was first proposed, and two years after its scheduled completion date.

(Lesson for Durhamites: if you want a park for your kids to frolic in, don't wait until they're old enough to walk... pretend its an exclusive prep-school kindergarten with a pre-natal waiting list, and pipe up early!)

North Durham's had its own share of delayed park projects coming to fruition of late, including the opening of the new dog park in the Northgate Park neighborhood. Chalk another one onto the "done" column -- the 'missing link' sidewalk segment along Stadium Drive between North Duke St. and Broad St. is finally done.

The concrete's so fresh you can still see the spray-paint marks from the construction crews, but the good news is that this means -- with little hurry, and less fanfare -- the North-South Greenway is at long last complete along its current build-out through Durham. Of course, it is slated to eventually extend north to the Eno River, but for now, from Horton Road in north Durham to NC 54 near The Streets at Southpoint, there's a continuous greenway or sidewalk trail link.

For those keeping score at home, it's a dedicated greenway from Horton Rd. to Whipporwill Park. A marked sidewalk trail picks up on Stadium Drive south of the park and carries traffic across Duke all the way to the stadium/hospital complex, with a greenway trail picking up next to the NC National Guard Armory. That dedicated trail continues to West Club Blvd., where it's a dicier sidewalk trail to the South Ellerbe Creek trail at Club & Washington.

From there, south you go on dedicated greenway to Trinity Ave., where the adventure really begins. You have to find your way along the rather poorly marked sidewalk-trail (look for the brick pattern), east to Washington, south to the DAP, east on Corporation to the Farmer's Market, through Central Park back to Foster St. Then, south along Foster, nee Corcoran, nee Blackwell. Pass underneath NC 147, the Durham Freeway, to the trailhead for the American Tobacco Trail, which gives you a non-stop greenway connection all the way to NC 54.

Confusing? A little. On the north side, it's not helped by the dearth of signage between Carver St. and Duke St.; it's easy to get the impression that the greenway ends at Duke. On the south end, unless I miss my guess, it looks like some of the sidewalk trail markers installed just a couple of years ago on downtown streets, particularly near the Marriott on the north end and between Main and the loop on the south end, were torn up and removed under the downtown streetscape renovations. (City folks, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this, or if this is as they say just a temporary situation.)

The last time I had an update from the City on this was back at Centerfest in fall 2005, when a nice rep from Parks & Rec informed me that this long-missing Stadium Drive segment would be opening "real soon now" as soon as General Services got the sidewalk installed. Just a few months, she opined.

As C.M. Herndon shows, the good things do come -- but you may need to wait a wee bit longer than you think.

Comments

[Chris]

It's been a while since I rode through that greenway trail, but the last time I did, the pavement was absolutely atrocious through most of Northgate Park and Rock Quarry Park. You really need a mountain bike to get through that stuff. Has that section already been re-paved? I was just wondering since you said that the trail was "complete". Unless work has been done recently, I would classify that section of the trail as "incomplete".

[Dan Clever]

From my understanding, the rough section of trail from Club to Murray is slated for repair in '08 or '09. There was some money to do this in the 2005 Bond, but I believe Parks was asking for a bit more this year.

I'm fairly certain that this is the oldest greenway in Durham. Aside from fixing the surface, they should also bring it up to modern greenway width.

[Chris]

Thanks Dan. I'm glad to hear that they will be re-paving that part of the trail soon. I ride my bike to the pool at Edison Johnson occasionally, but I specifically avoid that part of the trail by cutting-through the Northgate Park neighborhood. I really hope that Durham plans to maintain it's newer greenway trails better than it's maintained that section of trail. It's certainly a bad example of what can happen if the city doesn't perform the proper maintenance. I hope it's not a bad omen for the ATT as it starts to age . . . .

[Dan S.]

As a resident of north Durham, I am curious about the status of the still-missing 24-hour Harris Teeter that was supposed to go into the weed-filled parking lot that once held the Willowdale 8 theater. I was under the impression that the store would be built relatively soon after they closed the Northgate store... that was two years ago.