The Wolf River Greenway, which currently encompasses around 2.6 miles of trail near Germantown, will eventually extend all the way to Harbor Town. And on Friday morning, officials broke ground on one of the segments that extends the bicycle/pedestrian trail westward.
The groundbreaking took place at Kennedy Park in Raleigh, which is located along the path of the Wolf River. The greenway will closely follow the path of the river with bridges and outlook areas overlooking the water.
Chuck Flink with Alta Planning+Design, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based design firm working on the greenway project, said seven phases of the greenway extension are in design now — including the segment that runs through Kennedy Park — and those will begin construction in 2016. Another eight phases will go into the design phase in the next 30 days.
The $40 million expansion of the Wolf River Greenway should be completed by 2019. The majority of the funding for the project comes from the private sector.
Once complete, the Wolf River Greenway is expected to add 1,126,000 more bicycle trips in the county per year and 4,650,000 more walking trips, according to the Wolf River Conservancy.
“We get carried away on the built environment and our repaving projects, but we often forget about our natural environment,” said Mayor A C Wharton at Friday’s groundbreaking.