news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Before the downtown greenway ribbon-cutting ceremony began Wednesday, 3-year-old Alexa Bird was already making use of the jet black asphalt trail on her training bike.

Alexa, in a white and pink helmet, waddled around with her Skuut wooden bike under the supervision of her father, Steve Bird, who likes the trail’s proximity to their Southside home.

“When we get her a real bike and she gets proficient on it, it’ll be nice to have something a little safer for her to ride on than just having to ride down neighborhood streets,” Bird said.

More than 50 other people — a mix of biking and walking enthusiasts, civic leaders and neighborhood folks — attended the ceremony Wednesday for the first 1,800 feet of the loop, which has been completed on West Lee Street, from Freeman Mill Road to South Eugene Street.

The project — a collaboration between the city of Greensboro and the nonprofit Action Greensboro — is a 4.2-mile  recreational trail that will loop around the center city.

Trip Brown, co-chairman of an Action Greensboro committee overseeing the project, said he was “pumped” to see the materialization of a project he has supported for nearly 10 years.

“I’m so pleased with the crowd and the diversity of everybody,” Brown said. 

Brown said construction workers will likely break ground on the next section on Freeman Mill Road from West Lee Street to Spring Garden Street by summer’s end.

Detailed design work of phase two along Murrow Boulevard and Fisher Avenue could begin next month. Construction drawings could be completed by the fall. Construction is slated to start in the spring or summer of 2011.

The remaining two phases could be completed in five to 10 years.

“There are two critical things to the timeline as we go forward: One is money and two is that Chandler Concrete needs to relocate its facility which is presently on Mill Street,” Brown said.

Organizers have raised half of the greenway’s $26 million  budget, with $7 million coming from city street improvement bonds. Brown said they will seek more private donations and local, state and federal grants to make up the $13 million difference.

Chandler Concrete Co. at 1424 Mill St.  is the sole user of a rail line that the city wants to convert into part of the greenway. The company plans to move soon, pending an economic uptick, Brown said.

Contact Dioni L. Wise at 373-7090 or dioni.wise@news-record.com