By Jessica Levco
When my husband and I moved to Greensboro from Chicago during the pandemic, we didn’t have a car. Not because we were making some grand environmental statement. I just hadn’t driven a car in 12 years. I wasn’t entirely sure I could tell the difference between the gas and the brake pedal.
So, we searched for an apartment strategically, somewhere near the Downtown Greenway that everyone kept mentioning. We picked a place in College Hill, and suddenly the Downtown Greenway became the best way for me to explore the city.
Back in Chicago, I lived near the The 606, where I loved taking walks and bike rides. The Downtown Greenway felt like a second home from day one. After our son was born, it became an even bigger part of my routine. It was how I got groceries at Deep Roots, made my way to Central Library for story hour and met new friends at LoFi Park.
It was also the easiest place for two moms with huge strollers to walk side by side, complaining about sleep deprivation while our newborns napped.
I loved the Downtown Greenway, without really knowing it.
But that all changed last month when I hopped into a golf cart with Dabney Sanders.
How the Greenway started
Dabney’s been the Greenway project manager since 2007. She knows every sculpture, every bridge, every detail of how the Downtown Greenway came together. She also gives public golf cart rides (with a $10 donation suggestion) of the Greenway, throughout the year.
The Downtown Greenway didn’t start as a feel-good parks project. It was born out of economic necessity. In 2000, Greensboro leaders were worried about our city’s future because traditional economic pillars — tobacco, textiles and furniture — were waning.
Six local foundations came together to form Action Greensboro and hired McKinsey & Company to study the city’s future. What emerged was a bold idea: a four-mile loop encircling downtown that would redefine the city center, connect fractured neighborhoods and give people a reason to choose Greensboro as a place to live or start a business.
By 2008, Greensboro’s bicentennial year, voters approved a transportation bond dedicating public money to make it happen. The Downtown Greenway happened because of a 25-year public-private partnership. Action Greensboro raised over $14 million. The city committed over $40 million in local, state and federal funding. Artists got commissioned. Neighborhoods got involved.
And slowly, section by section, it started coming together.
The highway that tried to divide Greensboro
As we approached East Greensboro, Sanders pointed to where Murrow Boulevard cuts through Ole Asheboro, a six-lane divided highway that was supposed to be part of a bypass in the 1970s, but was never finished.
“We know that this was a racially motivated highway project designed to divide the East part of Greensboro, which is predominantly African American, from the rest of town,” Sanders says.
As a newcomer, this was news to me. What I saw as a well-maintained trail with innovative stormwater treatments was an act of urban healing. The Downtown Greenway removed on-ramps and off-ramps. It narrowed lanes. It added sidewalks and landscaping where none existed. It installed leading pedestrian intervals, those traffic signals that let walkers cross before cars can turn.
“This is one of the sections that we are very proud of because it shows a real difference that the Downtown Greenway has made in bridging the divide of our community,” Sanders says.
A lesson in art appreciation
I’ve noticed the sculptures along the Downtown Greenway, but never understood the full meaning behind each one. Here’s what I learned:
At the Freedom Cornerstone, we stopped at Radcliffe Bailey’s, “Ascension.” The concrete base is shaped like a ship’s hull, referencing the Middle Passage. The structure on top can be read as railroad tracks (a divide between Black and white communities and the Underground Railroad) or as a ladder (people ascending beyond their circumstances). The blue neon star on top is the North Star that guided people traveling the Underground Railroad.
Each neighborhood along the route has its own commissioned bench. At Ole Asheboro, sculptor
VanDorn Hinnant, who grew up in the neighborhood, created “Monument to Dignity and Respect,” featuring quotes from community leaders Nettie Coad and Dorothy Brown.
At the Innovation Cornerstone, artist Randy Walker created “Woven Works Park,” inspired by visits to the historic White Oak denim plant. There’s a spiral walkway leading to a bench on a turntable that spins. When you look up at the cabling while spinning, you get the sensation of being inside a spool of thread.
When Walker presented his plan to the Cumberland Court community, residents said, “If the theme is innovation, why not reference the sit-in movement as an innovative way to create change?”
Walker added two countertops with four stools, a direct reference to the Woolworth’s lunch counter where four North Carolina A&T students sat in 1960. N.C. A&T’s campus is two blocks away and those students would have walked through or very close to the site, Dabney says.
The Motion Cornerstone features “Gateway of the Open Book” by Brower Hatcher. The structure looks like a book opened on its spine. Inside the mesh, local artist Frank Russell created sculptures based on charcoal drawings by kids from the Warnersville neighborhood and Jones Elementary School. You’ll see things like fish, birds, musical notes, all representing motion. “It’s also a nod to the forward movement of people’s minds, recognizing the seven colleges and universities here,” Sanders says.
Along the Western Branch, Thomas Sayre created “Cairn’s Course,” those massive earth castings I’d always admired. He dug five-foot-wide holes on site, poured concrete colored with iron oxide to give it that terracotta color, let it cure for three weeks, then hauled those “stones” and threaded them onto stainless steel pipes. When you get close, you can see charcoal from old fires and pieces of terracotta embedded in the concrete.
Explore the economic impact of the Downtown Greenway
Because of the Downtown Greenway, the city has seen more than $650 million in private economic development. Here are a few highlights along the way:
- Let’s eat: Deep Roots, George’s Garage, Machete and The Sage Mule all cluster together because of the Downtown Greenway.
- Education: Union Square Campus is a major development collaboration between UNCG, N.C. A&T, Guilford Technical Community College and Cone Health. The idea is that this is the first building of what could become a multi-building campus where colleges and universities come together.
- Business: Centric Brands, a company that moved its headquarters from New York to Greensboro in 2019, took over the old Greensboro Gateway Center that developer Andy Zimmerman purchased. The same building also houses Transform GSO (a coworking space), Launch Greensboro (a center for entrepreneurship) and Elm & Bain (an event venue).
- Housing: The Greenway at Fisher Park and Greenway at Stadium Park used the Downtown Greenway as part of their marketing efforts to attract tenants to their apartment complex. The new Spring Street Apartments and Bailey Village are two other housing examples that came because of the Downtown Greenway. “We know that there are other sites along the Downtown Greenway that are ripe for housing development,” Sanders says.
Gaining a greater appreciation for the Downtown Greenway
When I first moved here, I walked, biked and ran along the Downtown Greenway without knowing any of this.
But when you understand what you’re walking through, it becomes so much more than a trail. You see the intentional healing of racial divides, a big economic bet that paid off and public art that honors our city’s history.
It’s evidence of what a city can do when it decides to invest in connection instead of division.
A big celebration is planned for May 2026, when all four miles will finally be complete. I’ll be there with my son, who’s not a baby anymore, walking through the Downtown Greenway that shaped our family’s Greensboro story before we even knew the half of it.
